CECID Hermes Won Merit Award at the Asia Pacific ICT Awards 2004

[Patrick Yee <kcyee@cecid.hku.hk>]

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CECID Hermes Won Merit Award at the Asia Pacific ICT Awards 2004
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Hong Kong SAR, Peoples Republic of China - December 14, 2004 - Center for
E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID), The University of Hong Kong
(HKU) is pleased to announce that our open source ebXML 
business-to-business
(B2B) Messaging Server, Hermes, has won the Merit Award of the R&D category
at the Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APTICA) 2004. This Award is presented to 
the
most outstanding ICT R&D project, with its ICT creation arising from the
practical application of scientific, engineering, or management knowledge
that results in new and improved products, processes, or services that fill
market needs. Participants of the Awards Program comprise members of the
APICTA Network. Its 14 member-economies include Australia, Brunei, Hong
Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines,
Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

CECID was nominated by the Hong Kong Computer Society (HKCS) to submit
Hermes as the only representative of Hong Kong for the R&D category to
compete with 14 other outstanding and innovative projects from other
member-economies. Entries under the R&D category were judged on five
criteria - uniqueness, proof of concept, features, quality and 
presentation.
Only two Merit Awards for this category were granted this year, and the
winners were Hermes of Hong Kong and Knowledge Discovery Research Tool of
Singapore.

In the Tertiary Student Project category, the Web Services Reliability 
(WSR)
Messaging Server project carried out by four HKU final year students also
won a Merit Award. CECID is pleased to have involved in this award-winning
project as the coach to the students. The WSR Messaging Server project aims
at addressing Web Services reliability in business transactions by adhering
strictly to the Web Services Reliability Messaging (WSRM) draft
specification developed by OASIS. In addition, a number of elements were
injected into the architecture to enhance its flexibility, scalability and
extensibility.

APTICA is an award scheme that has been recognized as a key and prestigious
event in the Asia-Pacific region. This year the Awards was held in Hong 
Kong
on 8-11 December 2004, with a presentation ceremony and gala dinner held on
10 December 2004. An Asia Pacific ITC Awards Pavilion was also set up at 
the
Asia Pacific IT Solutions Expo 2004 at the Hong Kong Convention & 
Exhibition
Centre on 8-11 December 2004, displaying over 40 outstanding IT solutions
applied to different industries like e-government and services, education
and training, applications and infrastructure tools, etc.
Hermes Business-to-Business (B2B) Messaging Server is an open-source 
Message
Service Handler based on an e-commerce open standard (OASIS ebXML Messaging
Service v.2.0). This awards winning product provides a standardized,
reliable and secure infrastructure for enterprises to exchange business 
data
on the Internet. About 7,300 downloads of Hermes' source code by developers
from 65+ economies have been recorded since its open-source release in two
years, and it has many successful use cases, most of which are innovative,
cost-effective applications used by enterprises for exchange of business
documents such as POs and invoices. Some local users of Hermes include 
MTRC,
OOCL, Sony, HMV, bigboXX.com and HKSAR Government's Marine Department.
Besides accreditation by the ebXML Asia Committee with Level 2 and 3 ebXML
Asia Interoperability Certificates, Hermes has won the Certificate of Merit
(Product Category) of the 6th HK Computer Society IT Excellence Awards.

About Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APTICA) (www.apicta.com)
The Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA) is an international Awards Program
initiated by the Multimedia Development Corporation of Malaysia to increase
ICT awareness in the community and assist in bridging the Digital 
Divide. By
providing networking and product benchmarking opportunities to ICT
innovators and entrepreneurs in the region, the program is designed to
stimulate ICT innovation and creativity, promote economic and trade
relations, facilitate technology transfer, and offer business matching
opportunities via exposure to venture capitalists and investors.

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, supports e-commerce standardization for Hong Kong and the Asia
Pacific Region, and transfers e-commerce technology and skills to the
community. With projects primarily funded by the Hong Kong Government's
Innovation and Technology Commission, CECID is an active member of OASIS 
and
the ebXML Asia Committee. The Center also collaborates with a number of 
lead
technology users in the Asia-Pacific Region on turning R&D results into
real-life business applications. CECID's contributions to the community
include its code donation of Hermes and ebMail to freebXML
(http://www.freebxml.org) and the production of an in-depth design and
management guide on XML Schemas for the Hong Kong Government. CECID is
currently developing a plug-and-play Internet appliance for secure and
reliable transmission of electronic documents based on ebXML / Web 
Services.

PR Contacts for Press and Analysts:
Dorris Tai (cwtai@cecid.hku.hk)
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