‘Cloud computing’ is the newly-minted buzz term to describe the next stage in the Internet's evolution, providing the means through which everything can be delivered to the computer user as a service wherever and whenever needed. In 2010, both Microsoft and Hewlett Packard declared that cloud computing is already a major focus for their research groups and Amazon, IBM and Google are set to become major players. In view of this, Authentication News thought it would be timely to examine the implications for authentication technology in terms that can be understood by the non specialist.

What is ‘cloud computing’? Here are a couple of simplistic definitions to get the ball rolling:

1. It means that the software you use, and the data you create with that software, are not on your personal computer, and maybe not even be on your company’s server; they are somewhere else. You can use the software by accessing it on the Internet.

2. Cloud computing is to your office computer what a cell phone is to a landline. Cell phones free us from being tied to the office. And now cloud computing means you can manage an entire organisation from any laptop anywhere. Cloud computing, therefore, is internet-based computing, where shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices, ‘off-the-shelf’ and on demand, in much the same way as we use and pay for electricity.

The term ‘cloud’ is a symbol for the Internet; an abstraction of the Internet’s underlying infrastructure, used to mark the point at which responsibility moves from the user to an external provider.

Software as a Service

One type of cloud computing is called SaaS – or Software as a Service. Gartner Inc, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, predicts that, worldwide, SaaS revenue will exceed $14 billion for the enterprise application markets by 2013, up from $7.5 billion in 2009.

With SaaS, any kind of software – from online banking to online product authentication and tracking - can be accessed from the Internet and used by all employees of an organisation. The software is never owned by the organisation - no license fee is paid and there are no upfront costs. The organisation instead pays a consumption fee, based on resources used, similar to the way we pay for electricity.

With SaaS, all maintenance and upgrades that would traditionally have been carried out by in house IT staff are now outsourced to the SaaS provider, hence the concept of ‘service’. The data that is created with the software can be stored – or hosted - in external servers that are maintained by the provider. The client therefore needs neither the skills nor the infrastructure to manage the system. 

Virtual Data Centers

According to Steve Wood, CEO of Covectra, a company offering multi-layered brand protection and based in Massachusetts, ‘Covectra takes advantage of cloud computing technology to provide its customers with remote, secure hosting sites instead of requiring them to invest in additional servers and associated hardware within their own facility. These virtual data centers take advantage of massive memory storage and high-speed processors, which are accessed on demand instead of costly full-time access. Our customers also can work through the cloud to develop and operate applications on our AuthentiTrack platform’.

Complete Turnkey Systems

Hence, Covectra is offering to brand owners a complete turnkey system, with unique encrypted serial numbers and the ability to print and store them in a data vault without requiring the brand owner to purchase data storage hardware. Everything they need is ‘in the cloud’ and is accessible from any location using a web portal and appropriate security credentials.

The service is accessed only as needed and end users, or inspectors, are able to interrogate the system to establish the credentials of a particular item found ‘in the field’. To the end user, the system looks very much like a user accessing his bank account on-line. The details of how it works is of little interest to the account holder or the bank. It’s the satisfaction of knowing that the computing power is supplied by a reputable company who supports it remotely and provides regular upgrades.

Another authentication company taking advantage of SaaS is Verify Brand, suppliers of product, document and supply chain security through its patented authentication and tracking system that it calls Digital Authentication, Track & Trace® (DATT).

Real Time Availability

Verify Brand’s technology is provided to manufacturers and governments through partner companies such as De La Rue, 3M, CCL Label and others. The company is based in Minneapolis, supports its solutions globally and is expanding the use of cloud based technologies such as CDN (Content Delivery Networks)  and cloud computing where and when applicable, eg. global SaaS deployments and real time, reliable availability.

Says company President Kevin Erdman: ‘cloud computing is a natural outcome of more and more software applications and services being provided through the use of the Internet, as is the case with our DATT and related data management solutions.  It is also one of the technologies that enables  DATT to be secure, low cost and reliable anywhere.’

The Verify Brand DATT system provided through a SaaS model is being used in 20 countries, all continents of the world, 15 languages in multiple industries and government and is expanding.

Adds Erdman, ‘it only makes sense that our SaaS-based supply chain security and management solutions will be increasingly coordinated, always available and reliable from multiple servers in multiple locations.  Cloud computing makes this possible.’
Managing UID Lifecycle

Erdman has a lofty vision of what his company is able to deliver as a result of these advances in computing technology. ‘We consider ourselves to be in the business of managing the life cycle of unique identification, from birth to death on whatever a UID resides on and managing it for whatever purpose. This is a much more holistic view than just authentication which is just one of the things that can be done with a UID.  When looking at our business in these terms, cloud computing is even more significant.’

Another example still is Texas-based security solutions provider Authentix. In 2009, in a move designed to widen its portfolio to clients in the food and pharma sectors, it made an agreement with One Network, a specialist in community-based on-demand supply chain solutions based on SaaS.

According to the company, the partnership offers solutions for product authentication, e-pedigree compliance, returns and recalls, as well as detailed product usage data at a significantly reduced cost from traditional approaches.

Full Supply Chain Visibility

The move was made in recognition of the growing demand from these sectors for a complete service capable of tracking products in a secure environment and authenticating these. The concept is that all parties can have full supply chain visibility so that they know the exact location and quantity of products anywhere in the chain, and can verify that these products are genuine and safe for use.

Authentix also stated that the two companies’ approach is both unique and economical because it is being offered as a service, thereby reducing the need for companies to operate and administer their own tracking networks.

At the point of manufacture, products will be marked with a barcode printed with inks containing covert nano-particles that will be used to authenticate the product. Products can be located and identified anywhere in the supply chain network – enabling these to be tracked all the way from manufacturer to consumer, as well as facilitating swift recalls if food or product safety has been compromised and allowing information about the product to be tracked as well, such as expiration dates.

Commenting on the partnership, and resulting system, Greg Brady, chairman and founder of One Network said: ‘the cost of authentication and tracking with current systems is impeding many companies. With our SaaS solution we are able to offer these capabilities at a much lower cost. We are able to authenticate each individual unit, no matter where it is in the value chain.’

Strategic Partnerships

Strategic partnerships appear to be very much the order of the day when harnessing the opportunities provided by Saas to authentication. New Momentum, a provider of online brand protection solutions through its proprietary web mining and reporting tools, has announced a number of these. One is with Oracle to target the pharmaceutical sector. Oracle is developing a platform for manufacturers that includes the ability to serialise each sellable unit and then track that unit through the supply chain via electronic pedigree. New Momentum's SaaS is in use in a number of industries, and was debuted in pharma earlier this year (see AN Vol 15, No 4).

According to the companies, theirs is the first solution to offer pharmaceutical companies the ability to track units through the supply chain as well as quickly identify and find counterfeits, and will enable such companies to step up their anti-counterfeiting efforts and comply with serialisation and pedigree mandates.

Smart Move

Partnership with California based Oracle was a smart move for New Momentum. As the third largest software revenue generator after Microsoft and IBM, its position on cloud computing is important. It is the world’s second largest independent software company and the leader in database technology and information management software, and offers customers the choice of running business software in both private and public clouds.

For developers of SaaS and independent software vendors (ISVs), Oracle also enables cloud computing through the Oracle Platform for SaaS. This is a suite of resources comprising a comprehensive, open and integrated set of technologies that provides ISVs with a single, integrated platform for both on-premise and cloud-based deployments, allowing ISVs to offer their customers a choice in where to run their software.

Scaleable Infrastructure

Grid computing is the basis of the Oracle Platform for SaaS and provides cost-effective and highly scalable software infrastructure for both public and private clouds. It enables groups of networked computers to be pooled and provisioned on demand to meet the changing needs of business, says the company. Instead of dedicated servers and storage for each application, multiple applications can share computing infrastructure, resulting in much greater flexibility, cost, power efficiency, performance, scalability and availability, all at the same time. Oracle also enables enterprises to deploy Oracle technologies in public clouds like the Amazon Web Services environment.

In an announcement earlier this month, New Momentum stated that two ‘tier 1’ pharmaceutical companies had recently selected it to combat  the escalating global counterfeit drug problem.  Both companies expect that, in addition to making it easier to find and shut down violators, their New Momentum solution will
play a key role in helping them meet upcoming government regulations. This is a reference to the imminent requirement for manufacturers and importers to notify the Food and Drug Administration about any known counterfeit  pharmaceuticals and their potential adverse health consequences. 

So it appears that New Momentum’s offerings of SaaS-based Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) software and Enterprise Brand Intelligence (EBI) are already paying dividends. (The former is intended to offer protection from threats arising from global outsourcing and internet trading while the latter assists with anti-counterfeiting).

In conclusion, we see that cloud computing is a term for important developments, already well advanced as a result of major players such as Google, IBM and Oracle. The practical outcome is the ability of smaller, specialist companies to make use of these developments to provide their partners with customised software related to the authentication and tracking of their products from factory to the point of consumption.

So when someone says ‘There’s an ‘app’ for that’, it has been delivered via the software-as-a-service model and made possible because of ‘the cloud’.