Replies to post #134552 on Wave Systems Corp. (fka WAVXQ)

[awk]

svenm: HP.....

Assuming that the Gov. or any one of its agancies is indeed going to implement TC then Wave becomes an important player indeed. It is a given that the Gov. will continue to have their platforms from multiple vendors.

In order to tie the clients together into a centrally managed infrastructure the clients need to be equipped with the "ETS Enterprise" edition. And when the Gov. buys HP computers they will want them equipped with the "ETS Enterprise" edition. And that is exactly the reason why HP will have to have some contract with Wave. Will it be bundling or will it be a software licensing and redistribution agreement? Maybe the latter first and bundling later?

Time will tell...

[RootOfTrust]

svenm re: interoperability for authentication:

This is over my head, but let's say I have a ETS-enabled PC and you have an HP ProtectTools-enabled PC and we want to exchange TPM-secured e-mail. Both ETS and ProtectTools have a secure e-mail function. So I think our two platforms, even if our TPMs use different TSSs, can exchange secure e-mail...so in that scenario even though HP ProtectTools only runs on the Infineon TSS, while ETS runs on all TSSs, HP's non-interoperability would not prevent an exchange of secure e-mail with a platform using a different TSS. But this e-mail scenario does not illustrate the interoperability/authentication case you raise.

Authentication of platforms within a network requires server software, and Wave is the only provider of TPM server software. So the issue isn't so much if an HP ProtectTools machine can authenticate a non-HP ProtectTools machine, as is there server software in the network that can authenticate each machine and user? Any enterprise who licenses Wave's server software would run ETS clients, and I don't know if it would be possible for Wave server software to manage clients that run HP ProtectTools or whether those clients would have to have ESC...don't think it matters because if the enterprise ran Wave-enabled servers, their clients would all be Wave as well.

Wave's interopearblity advantage is derived from the ability ETS has to run on the Infineon and Lenovo TSSs, both still used HP and Lenovo resectively. That way if an enterprise has HP or Lenovo machines ETS will run on them as well, even though they use different TSSs.