Lotus moves one step closer to a European ESD structure

Lotus has stolen a march on Microsoft in the race to establish a European electronic software distribution infrastructure.

Jes Miller, channel sales manager EMEA for Lotus, said IBM and Lotus had signed US transaction processing firms Cybersource and Litelnet as clearing houses for financial transactions.

Lotus will operate pilots with major resellers within the next few months.

Representatives from the industry met in Barcelona two weeks ago to discuss appointing a clearing house.

Richard Lindh, MS director of channel policies for Europe, said vendors were some way from signing a common clearing house. ?No company has yet shown it can deal with simultaneous transaction processing and distribution for Europe. We want to get it right.?