FW: [pki-askvendors] Revised Ask Vendors survey

["Shivangi Nadkarni" <shivangi@safescrypt.com>]

Hi

Here are some comments from my end...


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Hanna [mailto:Steve.Hanna@Sun.COM]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2004 2:02 AM
> To: PKI TC Ask Vendors SC
> Subject: [pki-askvendors] Revised Ask Vendors survey
>
>
> I have revised the draft Ask Vendors survey,
> which is to be sent to product managers or
> other contacts at key software application
> vendors, investigating what would help them
> add PKI support to their products.
>
> Please review this and respond with comments
> as soon as possible. Then we can revise it
> and send it to the PKI TC for review.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Steve
>
> --------------
>
> Subject: PKI Support in Your Products
>
> Please forward this email to the Product Manager
> for your ??? product or someone else who has
> insight into the process by which the feature
> set for this product is chosen.

>>>>>> Shivangi>>> Do we need to give a small intro here saying we are
writing to you from the OASIS PKI Technical Committee which is looking at
ways and means of making PKI easy to use......etc....? Just to ensure that
the person who receives this doesnt trash the mail, especially if he/she
is not the concerned person to whom the survey is targetted.

Or is is that these folks have already been contacted so they dont need a
repeat?


> Thanks,
>
> Steve Hanna
> Co-chair, OASIS PKI Technical Committee
>
> -------------
>
> Dear Sir/Madam,
>
> In our recent survey of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)
> users and experts, the OASIS PKI Technical Committee
> found that the primary obstacle to PKI deployment and
> usage was "Software Applications Don't Support It".
> Textual comments indicated that many applications have
> no PKI support and that, when present, application PKI
> support differs widely and is often incompatible. This
> makes it very hard for users to deploy PKI. They must
> spend large amounts of money customizing applications
> to work in their PKI installation.
>
> The OASIS PKI TC has developed a PKI Action Plan in
> response to the survey results. One of the Action
> Items in this plan calls for us to "Ask Application
> Vendors What They Need" to provide better PKI support.
> Then we will work to provide whatever's lacking.
>
> So we'd like to ask you to complete the following
> short survey exploring what could be done to help
> you provide better support for PKI (Public Key
> Infrastructure).
>
> Why is this worth your valuable time? The market for
> PKI enabled applications is potentially quite large.
> The U.S. Department of Defense is now deploying
> PKI enabled smart cards to 4 million workers.
> Deployment at the FBI is under way and discussions
> have begun on extending the system throughout the
> U.S. government. Corporate adoption of PKI enabled
> smart cards is picking up with large companies
> like Johnson and Johnson and Sun Microsystems
> leading the way.
>

>>>>>Shivangi>>> At a global level also, much of Europe and Asia have PKI
initiatives and E-Signature legislations that directly or indirectly
propagate PKI

(Sorry - cudnt resist adding a bit of "non-US" centric point in your note
;-))

> Enough preliminaries. Here's the survey. Please
> complete it and return it to me for tabulation.
> If you have any questions, please don't hesitate
> to ask me. And note that we will keep all your
> responses confidential. Only overall summaries
> will be released.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Steve Hanna
> Co-chair, OASIS PKI Technical Committee
>
> P.S. If you would like to review our PKI Action Plan,
> please do so. It is available from
> http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/pki/pkiactionplan.pdf
> That document includes URLs for the results from
> our previous surveys.
>
> -------------
>
> Vendor Survey on PKI Support
> OASIS PKI Technical Committee
>
> 1) Does your company currently sell products with
>     PKI support? If so, which ones?
>
>
> 2) Which of the items listed below would be most
>     important to your company in deciding whether
>     to add or improve PKI support in your products?
>
> Please divide 100 points among these categories
> in any way you like to indicate which would be
> most important in making your decision.
>
> __ Solid customer demand (projected revenue increase)
> __ Better PKI-related standards
> __ Interoperability tests
> __ PKI support in platforms (Windows, Java, etc.)
> __ Cross-platform PKI libraries
> __ Training
> __ Other (please describe)
>
>
>
> 3) If the items you marked in the last question
>     were provided, do you expect that your company
>     would decide to add or improve PKI support in
>     your products?
>
> __ Yes
> __ No
> __ Maybe
>
> 4) Do you have any other comments to add, especially
>     about adding PKI support to your company's products?
>
>
> 5) What is your job title?

>>>>>>>Shivangi>>>>> Steve, is this survey targetted at those orgns who
already have PKI support built in for their products or for those who do
not currently have support but are "candidates" for the same? If it is
going to be answered by people who already have some level of support
built in (thats the impression I got from the list of vendors u've
circulated), then there shud be a few more questions for them like :

-Are you happy with the PKI functionality/ features built into your
product? If not, what specific areas would you like to enhance/ improve?
-Are the existing standards in PKI sufficient for building your
applications? Did you feel constrained at any point in time by the lack
of/ incompleteness of standards?
-Did you have to take any decisions to do some amount of "proprietary
implementation" to overcome lack of a standard specification? Would you
like to share that with us?

These were some thoughts that came to my mind while going thru your mail.
If I have any more bursts of inspiration, will let you know.

rgds
Shivangi