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Advanced Personalization Standards From Global Platform
GlobalPlatform announces the availability of its Profile and Scripting Systems Specifications, which offer a significantly reduced time to market and lower costs to Issuers by defining a standardised method of personalisation for multiple application smart cards.
As a result of the Specifications, Issuers will receive a ready-to-execute package from application developers that includes the application code with the profiles and scripts necessary to automatically personalise their multi-application smart cards.
"The GlobalPlatform Profile and Scripting Specifications are part of a complete systems architecture for managing multiple application smart cards and defining interoperability with back-office or legacy systems," comments Bob Beer, Chair of the GlobalPlatform Systems Committee responsible for leading the development of the Specifications and VP of Datacard.
"Issuers, in particular, are set to benefit enormously and immediately from the release of these specifications, which will make a dramatic difference to their bottom line by increasing efficiency, reducing their products' time to market and generally lowering costs. The completion of these specifications signals a huge leap forward for interoperability within the smart card industry."
The new Profile and Scripting Specifications bring numerous and unprecedented advantages to Issuers and application developers alike. In summary, the Specifications will:-
* Simplify and expedite the smart card personalisation process;
* Bring the simplicity associated with the concept of PC 'install wizard' to the world of smart cards;
* Reduce the cost to Issuers and shorten their products' time to market;
* Offer a significant competitive advantage to application developers who use the specifications.
The new Specifications, which use XML to exchange information and adopt Java Script as their programming language, are not proprietary, meaning that they can be used by all smart cards - not only those which are GlobalPlatform-based Java Cards. This will make the transition to smart cards very easy for a lot of Issuers and will ensure global access. XML is recognised as an open standard for communications between disparate systems and for developers familiar with procedural or object oriented languages, Java Script is an easy-to-learn scripting language which has found wide use in Internet applications.
Under the guidelines of the Profile and Scripting Specifications, Application Developers will be responsible for defining data generation, application download and personalisation - processes previously undertaken by Issuers.
This shift of complex and time-consuming development processes away from Issuers and back to the specialist software developers, redeems Issuers from a role which had previously been imposed upon them, but one which is not central to their business. The GlobalPlatform Scripting Specifications provide a standard around which application and software developers can supply the critical elements needed for the deployment of their new application offerings on a variety of smart card products.
Availability
The Profile and Scripting Specifications, which are available for free download from the GlobalPlatform public website, www.globalplatform.org, mark a huge advancement from an industry perspective towards global interoperability for multiple application smart cards, as they relate to the card production process.
The standards have already received the backing of a number of major vendors; CardBASE Technologies, Datacard, Gemplus, Giesecke and Devrient, Oberthur, SchlumbergerSema, Thales e-Security, Ubiq and Visa International have all expressed their interest in adopting the new Specifications.
Bob Beer summarises: "This advancement is truly an evolutionary step for the smart card industry. It also signals the great progress that is being made by GlobalPlatform in its quest for interoperability and reinforces GlobalPlatform's position as a leading industry body for multiple application smart card growth."
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