Heading enCommerce Japan as vice president and general manager is Yutaka Saito, previously CEO of Sirius, Mitsubishi's enterprise computing software and systems integration subsidiary.

"enCommerce has a proven track record for delivering world-class solutions to the Japanese market," said Saito.

GetAccess, the company's flagship product, is a comprehensive, Internet-scale Web access management solution that accelerates the development and deployment of secure electronic business portals through plug-in authentication, authorization, and administration of access to corporate networks.

enCommerce has been selling a Japanese version of getAccess, 2.0J, through local partners since 1997. A new version, getAccess 3.0J, is scheduled to ship this summer.

From current Japanese annual revenues of about 300 million yen (US$2.5 million), enCommerce hopes that the efforts of its new subsidiary and release of getAccess 3.0J will propel Japan-based sales to 4 billion yen (US$33.3 million) by 2002.

Since its founding in 1997, enCommerce has cultivated strong ties with the Japanese business community and attracted support from investors such as EC-One, Inc., Mitsubishi Corp., and Nippon Investment & Finance.

The company has strategic distribution agreements with Osaka Gas Information Research Institute (OGIS-RI), the systems integration subsidiary of Japan's second largest gas company, and Mitsubishi Corp. Current customers include Asahi Chemical, JapanNet, Kawasaki, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, NTT, and OGIS-RI.

"We have served some of the largest global enterprises in Japan -- leaders in the adoption of next-generation e-business solutions," said Alberto Yepez, chairman and CEO of enCommerce.

"We are proud to establish a permanent base of operations to continue to meet their needs for secure, multinational, Internet-scale platforms for conducting e-commerce around the world."

In April, enCommerce announced that Yazaki Parts, the world's largest manufacturer and reseller of automotive parts and electronic instruments, has selected getAccess for its new Internet-based supplier portal that connects Yazaki divisions and overseas offices with hundreds of third-party suppliers.

Yazaki's supplier portal, Japan's first large-scale, 100% Enterprise Java Beans-compliant enterprise information system, was developed by enCommerce partner EC-One.

"getAccess provides an integral component to our portal by recognizing various users' roles within the Yazaki enterprise, and providing a secure yet easily accessible portal to the purchasing data that each user is authorized to see," said Eihiro Saishu, senior vice president and CTO of EC-One.

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