Hermes Celebrate 5th Birthday with New H2O Launch
Hermes Celebrates 5th Birthday with New H2O Launch
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 GNU General Public License Version 2. Users and developers can get community support through the mailing list [email protected]. Professional support is provided by CECID’s VARs and can be requested through email [email protected].
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)
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 ([email protected])
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