A Scalable Interoperability Architecture for Certified Mail Systems

Many certified mail systems have been provided on the Internet to ensure reliable and secure electronic communication services analogous to postal registered mail. Most systems are closed and due to their heterogeneity and diversity far from being interoperable. However, interoperability is vital to ease global business communications. In this paper, we present a scalable interoperability architecture to bridge certified mails systems by means of a generic meta-data driven model. Our approach defines a network of translation gateways using a unified protocol in order to establish a seamless communication link and trust relationships between different certified mail systems. The concept is being demonstrated and evaluated in an international project.