According to Ayling, there is already interest in the product, with sites such as The Basement one of the many already signed-up. "We have already received the go-ahead from a number of companies... we look after 27 big merchants from Shopfast.com.au to Wishlist.com.au with a marketing project we are involved in, so we will be going out to all of those merchants as well."

Microsoft has embarked on an ambitious marketing programme, waiving the sign-up fee for Passport for the first twelve months, according to Frank Arrigo, developer evangelist for the .NET developer group.

Arrigo claims this waiver applies to users signing up to JPassport, and that Microsoft Australia is currently in talks with BuyItOnline about the latter company becoming a reseller of Passport.

BuyItOnline's Ayling confirms reseller discussions and refers to his company as an "extra cog in the Microsoft money machine". He believes that the provision of a Java version of Passport will attract new customers to Microsoft products.

"The Microsoft money machine was only able to pick up the Microsoft community before, and now it can pick up the Java community. Once we've pulled a person from Java through to using Passport, who knows what other Microsoft services they might start using," he said.

According to Ayling, JPassport is targeting the Java community exclusively, and not approaching existing Microsoft Windows users.

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ft has embarked on an ambitious marketing programme, waiving the sign-up fee for Passport for the first twelve months, according to Frank Arrigo, developer evangelist for the .NET developer group.

Arrigo claims this waiver applies to users signing up to JPassport, and that Microsoft Australia is currently in talks with BuyItOnline about the latter company becoming a reseller of Passport.

BuyItOnline's Ayling confirms reseller discussions and refers to his company as an "extra cog in the Microsoft money machine". He believes that the provision of a Java version of Passport will attract new customers to Microsoft products.

"The Microsoft money machine was only able to pick up the Microsoft community before, and now it can pick up the Java community. Once we've pulled a person from Java through to using Passport, who knows what other Microsoft services they might start using," he said.

According to Ayling, JPassport is targeting the Java community exclusively, and not approaching existing Microsoft Windows users.

"We are not talking to Windows people at all. If Windows people want to use Passport, they should do it the Microsoft way. Anyone that's using Linux, or Solaris, or Java, all of these people can use JPassport and we are directing the customer flow back to Microsoft," says Ayling.

Southern Storm Software's Weatherly believes JPassport's relationship with Microsoft is not ideal.

"The server side and the database of user information remains under Microsoft control...leaving the database in the hands of Microsoft is not a good idea," said Weatherly.

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