Xcert Software, Inc.

Xcert's business is in developing Internet and Intranet security enhancemen t technology. Xcert was founded in April 1996 by Andrew Csinger and Pat Ric hard and was headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. Xcert's solution to Intern et security was a public key infrastructure (PKI). PKI is a system of digit al certificates, certificate authorities (CAs) and other registration autho rities that verify and authenticate the validity of each party involved in an Internet transaction Xcert's PKI technology allows organizations of any size to issue digital certificates to their members. These organizations be come their own CA and are empowered to issue digital certificates to their individual client base. This case study is about a start-up company that is in transition from a dream stage to a reality stage. One of the issues tha t surfaces in the case study is intraindustry competition. Despite being an early entrant into the Internet security business, Xcert faced brutal comp etition from companies such as Entrust, Nortel, VeriSign and Netscape. The problems facing the company include (1) finances, (2) future direction and leadership, (3) structure, experience and size and (4) marketing. This is a very rich case study with a number of interrelated issues. The case serves two teaching aims. Firstly, this case allows students to confront and disc uss real-life issues facing a start-up information technology (IT) company. The students analysing the case are asked to provide alternatives and solu tions to the problems by putting themselves in the positions of the founder s of the company. Students should come to understand the difficulty in mana ging a start-up company and the various trade-offs the management needs to make. Secondly, the case study introduces various Internet security concept s to students.