OTTAWA, Sept. 13 -- Alacris(R) Inc., a developer of certificate management and identity assurance software products, today announced a technology partnership with Gemplus International S.A., one of the world's leading providers of smart card solutions, that offers customers a powerful turnkey smart card and certificate management solution for enterprise Windows environments.

The technology partnership integrates Gemplus's GemSAFE smart cards with idNexus(TM) for Microsoft, Alacris' flagship product that provides integrated management of digital certificate and smart card technologies. The combined product offerings provide a robust smart card solution that not only brings additional security and convenience to the Windows networking environment, but also reduces the life-cycle management costs of supporting integrated smart card and public key infrastructure (PKI) deployments.

"We are pleased to be working with such a leading player in the smart card industry," said Conrad Bayer, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Alacris. "Extending our idNexus product to support Gemplus's GemSAFE smart cards reinforces our strategy of delivering best-of-breed authentication and identity assurance solutions to enterprise Windows clients."

,p>"The combination of Alacris' idNexus and Gemplus's GemSAFE smart card product offerings provides a robust identity assurance management system that enables customers to cost effectively deploy digital certificates and smart card-based identity solutions," said Dave Ludin, Vice President of Gemplus's ID & Security business unit in North America. "We are excited about the opportunities this technology alliance with Alacris presents for our customers."

The Alacris idNexus for Microsoft product simplifies digital certificate and smart card deployment specifically for enterprise environments using Windows 2003 Certificate Services, Active Directory (AD) and Internet Information Services (IIS).