[ebmail-develop] [Fwd: Press Release - Hermes Celebrates 5th Birthday with New H2O Launch [Testing]]

[Dorris T. <cw...@ce...>]

**Hermes Celebrates 5th Birthday with New H2O Launch* * 
<http://www.cecid.hku.hk/pressrelease_20070601_H20Launch.php>

Hong Kong SAR, Peoples Republic of China - 1 June 2007 - Center for 
E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID), The University of Hong 
Kong (HKU) celebrates Hermes' 5th birthday with the launch of a new open 
source version of Hermes Messaging Gateway v2.0 (H2O). Thanks to project 
funding from the HKSAR Government's Innovation & Technology Commission, 
Hermes is available as free, open source to users and developers of 
business-to-business integration and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).

First version released in June 2002, Hermes has since become a popular 
and awards-winning open source solution for organizations to exchange 
information in ebXML Messaging (ebMS) or Applicability Specification 2 
(AS2) formats with their business partners. Developers and users from 
over 80 economies around the world have downloaded and adopted Hermes. 
The software won the Best Infrastructure and Communication Application 
of the Linux Business Award 2005 as well as Certificates of Merit of the 
Asia-Pacific ICT Awards 2004 and HK Computer Society IT Excellence Award 
2004.

The latest version, H2O (H-two-oh), replaces two predecessors (H2CE and 
H2EE) with additional tools and a full set of documentation to make 
configuration and administration even more easily. It includes an 
installation wizard, web-based GUI admin tool, message status query 
capabilities, and documentation of an installation guide, configuration 
guide, admin tool user guide as well as the plug-in development guide.

H2O and its source code 
(http://community.cecid.hku.hk/index.php/product/download/download_h2o/) 
are released under <http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html>GNU General 
Public License Version 2 <http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html>. Users 
and developers can get community support through the mailing list 
cec...@go... <mailto:cec...@go...>. 
Professional support is provided by CECID's VARs and can be requested 
through email en...@ce... <mailto:en...@ce...>.

Completed the AS2 Interoperability Testing AS-1Q05 with 29 other 
participants (http://ebusinessready.org/as2.html) organized by U.S. 
leading testing company, Drummond Group Inc., Hermes 2 enables real-time 
communication through HTTP or HTTPS to transmit data over the Internet. 
Besides, it provides security for the transport payload through Secure 
Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME), digital signatures and 
encryption, while reliability and non-repudiation are achieved through 
the use of receipts.

The AS2 standard, commonly used in supply chains by large retailers, 
manufacturers and suppliers, is often regarded as the "EDI over 
Internet" standard. Hermes 2 facilitates large as well as small 
enterprises to exchange EDI or other business-to-business data with 
their partners and customers. It operates as a Java web application. The 
ebXML Messaging Service (ebMS) and AS2 messaging capabilities are 
facilitated by the corresponding plugins, which can be easily developed 
by users through Hermes' Simple Plugin Architecture specification. The 
messaging operation requires a database (PostgreSQL or Oracle 9i or 
above) with JDBC connectivity to keep track of the messaging status.


*About CECID* (www.cecid.hku.hk <http://www.cecid.hku.hk/index.php>)
Established in January 2002, Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure 
Development (CECID) at the University of Hong Kong conducts e-commerce 
research and development with the vision of helping organizations 
increase their competitiveness in the global economy. CECID develops 
e-commerce enabling technologies, participates in important 
international e-commerce initiatives, as well as supports e-commerce 
standardization for Hong Kong and the Asia Pacific Region. With projects 
primarily funded by the Hong Kong Government's Innovation and Technology 
Commission, CECID also takes on the mission to transfer knowledge and 
technology to the community. Besides organizing forums and seminars, the 
Center licenses its R&D results through the University of Hong Kong to 
IT industry. Its acclaimed e-commerce technology, Hermes, has penetrated 
over 80 economies and won the Best Infrastructure and Communication 
Application of the Linux Business Award 2005 as well as Certificates of 
Merit of the Asia-Pacific ICT Awards 2004 and HK Computer Society IT 
Excellence Award 2004.

*PR Contacts for Press and Analysts*
Dorris Tai (cw...@ce... <mailto:cw...@ce...>)
Business Manager
Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID)
Dept. of Computer Science
The University of Hong Kong
Tel: +852 2859 2818
Fax: +852 2547 4611
URL: http://www.cecid.hku.hk <http://www.cecid.hku.hk/index.php>