Adoption of CEF eDelivery AS4 is Accelerating!
CEF eDelivery brings new market opportunities for service providers interested in offering pan-European Electronic Registered Delivery Services and for software vendors interested in providing messaging middleware compatible with the requirements set in Regulation (EU) N°910/2014 (commonly known as the 'eIDAS Regulation').
Currently, a growing number of AS4 solution providers realize the benefits of implementing the specifications of the CEF eDelivery building block and becoming part of the eDelivery community.
The eDelivery building block of the Connecting Europe Facility helps public administrations and businesses (indirectly citizens) to participate in Messaging Infrastructures which facilitate the delivery of electronic data and official documents such as eInvoices or eClaims. The use of an Access Point conformant with the e-SENS Profile of the AS4 Message Protocol enables heterogeneous systems to interact with each other in a secure, reliable and trusted way.
It's important to note that this message protocol is not owned, created or controlled by the public sector. Quite the opposite, CEF uses a profile of the ebMS3 and AS4 technical specifications of OASIS, a non-profit consortium that promotes industry consensus for the global information society. This profile is available for free to the ICT industry on the CEF Digital 2018 website. Moreover, there are several types of grants available for implementing the protocol in new or existing software solutions. In addition to make grants available, the European Commission provides a set of services to support its implementation and mitigate any risks. These services are detailed in the eDelivery Services hub on the CEF Digital 2018 website.
One of these services is the Conformance Testing Service where the CEF eDelivery Team provides ready to use test cases, a testing platform, and supports the users of the service during their entire conformance testing process.
Since the conformance testing service went live in Q2 2016, a growing number of AS4 solution providers have taken advantage of the services and support offered by the CEF eDelivery team to demonstrate conformance to the specifications of the CEF eDelivery building block and become part of the eDelivery community.
This is good news for all stakeholders on either the demand or the supply side.
On the demand side, the numerous public administrations and businesses that are planning to participate to initiatives that reuse the CEF eDelivery building block, can choose to partner up with solution providers that cover a wide spectrum in the IT landscape:
- Ranging from SMEs to multinationals,
- Implementing their solution on different technology platforms such as Java, .NET and Perl,
- Providing open source, commercial and mixed licensing options,
- Geographically spread (Europe, US, Africa),
- Offering value added services such as consultancy, backend integration solutions, on premise support or different hosting options,
On the supply side, the solutions providers that are becoming part of the eDelivery community can benefit from:
- Sharing experiences with other solution providers,
- Promoting themselves to users in existing and upcoming European wide projects,
- Participating to interoperability testing and load testing campaigns,
- Making the most of the available grants to even further expand their service offering,
So now is the time to take action and contribute to the uptake of the Digital Single Market!