IBM, VeriSign Reach Marketing Pact

Tue Jan 22 08:17:46 EST 2002

http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB101165511770615680.djm&template=printing.tmpl

January 22, 2002

Tech Center

IBM, VeriSign Reach Marketing Pact;
VeriSign Will Cut 3% of Employees

A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE News Roundup

International Business Machines Corp., based in Armonk, N.Y., said it
reached a technology and services pact with VeriSign Inc. to jointly sell
services for identifying remote computer users.

As part of the pact, VeriSign will buy IBM server and software
infrastructure to run its future digital security services. VeriSign said
it has been primarily a Sun Microsystems Inc. customer. Terms weren't
disclosed.

VeriSign, Mountain View, Calif., runs digital-authentication services that
certify that users are who they claim to be. The company said it will use
software from IBM's Tivoli unit to develop "entitlement services" that
specify what privileges each user has within a computer system.

The two companies will also develop and market services to enable reliable
Web services in which computers use the XML language to order or pay for
goods without human approval.

Last week, IBM reported its fourth-quarter net income fell 13% amid a
surprisingly large revenue decline of 11% due to an unexpected slowdown at
its huge services operation. The earnings were a penny a share above
analysts' forecasts.

Separately, VeriSign said it has cut 100 jobs, or 3% of its total work
force of 3,000. A company spokeswoman said the cuts, which occurred about
two weeks ago, were concentrated in the company's mass-market division that
sells security, e-commerce and Web address products to small businesses and
individuals. The spokeswoman said VeriSign continues to hire in other
divisions.

VeriSign has been on a spending spree in recent months, with purchases
including Internet-domain registration specialist 1GlobalPlace Inc.,
cystomer-service product provider H.O. Systems Inc. and .tv Corp., the
exclusive global registry for Web addresses ending in .tv.
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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