High Quality Messaging and Electronic Commerce: Technical Foundations, Standards and Protocols (Soft

I am pleased to introduce this publication based on one of the deliverables of the NO PROBLEMS project. This is one of the projects co-financed by the European Commission in the framework of the TEN-Telecom programme. Electronic commerce is high up on the agenda of the European Commission and is one of the priorities of the TEN-Telecom programme. Electronic commerce requires a reliable and secure communications environment. But in order to attract the large number of Europe's SMEs and the European citizens, electronic commerce support services must be widely accessible at low cost. The NO PROBLEMS project has addressed these challenging requirements by combining two complementary technologies: X.400 messaging for the reliability and the security framework, Internet for the low cost accessibility. NO PROBLEMS is in many regards illustrative of the TEN-Telecom objectives: it combines available technology to provide innovative services to Europe's SMEs. This publication provides an in-depth insight into some of the key technologies expected to playa major role in the support of electronic commerce. Robert Verrue Director General DG XIII European Commission This publication is based on documents of the NO PROBLEMS project, which has been founded by the European Commission DG XIII. The project partners have been INFONOVA GmbH and DATAKOM Austria from Austria as well as ITK Telekommunikation from Germany and ATLANTIDE from France.