Microsoft Corp has plunged into the smart card market with an operating systems that will compete with existing systems such as MultOS and Java Card. Microsoft has already won backing from leading smart card vendors Schlumberger Electronic Transactions and Gemplus Associates International. A beta version is due to be released in January next year and pilot projects for security applications is underway for heavyweight customers Merrill Lynch Company Inc and Cable and Wireless. With the smart card industry moving from proprietary operating systems to competing platforms such as MultOS and Java card, Microsoft hopes its low-cost OS will bring the same degree of standardization for the industry that it has brought to the PC market. Microsoft’s Smart Cards for Windows is an 8-bit operating system with 8K of ROM. The company says it has extended the PC environment into smart cards so that independent software vendors can use the same development tools such as Visual C++ and Visual Basis that they employ for traditional Windows applications. Competitive smart card systems however already offer substantial integration with the Windows environment and Microsoft has been working with the industry and offers a standard model for interfacing smart card readers and cards with PCs. Microsoft’s move has been welcomed in the industry. David Levy, CEO of Bull Smart Cards and Terminals said that Microsoft’s entry will boost electronic commerce activity and will be of overall benefit to the entire industry. While forecasters estimate that the smart card market could rise from 1.1billion last year to 2.7 billion by 2003, it has still to take off in the US. David Birch, director of UK IT consultancy Consult Hyperion argued that Microsoft’s move would ‘legitimize’ smart card use in the eyes of the business world. If large corporate customers begin to use Windows Card for the single application of Windows NT secure logon, for example, then that means that PCs and laptops will begin to ship with smart card interfaces as standard in the near future.
