Hong Kong SAR, Peoples Republic of China - 1 June 2007 - Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID), The University of Hong Kong (HKU) celebrates  Hermes’ 5th birthday with the launch of a new open source version of Hermes Messaging Gateway v2.0 (H2O). Thanks to project funding from the HKSAR 
Government's Innovation & Technology Commission, Hermes is available as free, open source to users and developers of business-to-business integration and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).

First version released in June 2002, Hermes has since become a popular and awards-winning open source solution for organizations to exchange information in ebXML Messaging (ebMS) or Applicability Specification 2 (AS2) formats with their 
business partners. Developers and users from over 80 economies around the world have downloaded and adopted Hermes. The software won the Best Infrastructure and Communication Application of the Linux Business Award 2005 as well as 
Certificates of Merit of the Asia-Pacific ICT Awards 2004 and HK Computer Society IT Excellence Award 2004.

The latest version, H2O (H-two-oh), replaces two predecessors (H2CE and H2EE) with additional tools and a full set of documentation to make configuration and administration even more easily. It includes an installation wizard, web-based GUI admin tool, message status query capabilities, and documentation of an 
installation guide, configuration guide, admin tool user guide as well as the plug-in development guide.

H2O and its source code 
Released under copyright GNU General Public License 
Version 2. Users and developers can get community support through the mailing list cecid-hermes2@googlegroups.com 
<mailto:cecid-hermes2@googlegroups.com>. Professional support is provided by CECID’s VARs and can be requested through email enquiry@cecid.hku.hk <mailto:enquiry@cecid.hku.hk>.

Completed the AS2 Interoperability Testing AS-1Q05 with 29 other participants (http://ebusinessready.org/as2.html) organized by U.S. leading testing company, Drummond Group Inc., Hermes 2 enables real-time communication through HTTP or HTTPS to transmit data over the Internet. Besides, it provides security for the transport payload through Secure Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME), digital signatures and encryption, while reliability and non-repudiation are achieved through the use of receipts.

The AS2 standard, commonly used in supply chains by large retailers, manufacturers and suppliers, is often regarded as the “EDI over Internet” standard. Hermes 2 facilitates large as well as small enterprises to exchange EDI or other business-to-business data with their partners and customers. It 
operates as a Java web application. The ebXML Messaging Service (ebMS) and AS2 messaging capabilities are facilitated by the corresponding plugins, which can be easily developed by users through Hermes’ Simple Plugin Architecture specification. The messaging operation requires a database (PostgreSQL or Oracle 
9i or above) with JDBC connectivity to keep track of the messaging status.

CECID was established in January 2002 at the University of Hong Kong conducts e-commerce research and development with the vision of helping organizations increase their competitiveness in the global economy. CECID develops e-commerce enabling 
technologies, participates in important international e-commerce initiatives, as well as supports e-commerce standardization for Hong Kong and the Asia Pacific Region. With projects primarily funded by the Hong Kong Government's Innovation and Technology Commission, CECID also takes on the mission to transfer knowledge and technology to the community. Besides organizing forums and seminars, the Center licenses its R&D results through the University of Hong Kong to IT industry. Its acclaimed e-commerce technology, Hermes, has penetrated over 80 
economies and won the Best Infrastructure and Communication Application of the Linux Business Award 2005 as well as Certificates of Merit of the Asia-Pacific ICT Awards 2004 and HK Computer Society IT Excellence Award 2004.