By lunchtime Mr Fran Rooney, president and chief executive officer of the Irish company, Baltimore Technologies, was a man in need of a cigarette. He doesn't normally smoke, except for the occasional cigar, but this was a stressful occasion.

Baltimore had organised its first seminar on Public Key Infrastructure in the United States. It chose the Marriott World Trade Center in New York because of its proximity to the financial district and Mr Rooney was not disappointed with the attendance. Representatives from big name financial services firms such as Alliance Capital, Chase Manhattan Bank and J.P. Morgan were there.

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) now underpins almost all electronic commerce and emerging technologies. It is an enabling technology that ensures corporate information is kept secure and only accessed by those with specific rights. As technologies such as the Internet, voice over Internet protocol and broadband networks converge, PKI will most likely become the standard to support these technologies.

Baltimore's flagship product is the Unicert Certificate Authority which issues and manages digital certificates for applications such as e-mail, Web browsers and virtual private networks. Unicert includes a registration authority, a certification authority as well as a directory to store certificates.

The seminar in New York was significant because since the beginning of the year, Baltimore has been aggressively pushing into the US market. It has hired 50 people in the US alone in places like Boston, Washington D.C., Texas, and Silicon Valley.

However, establishing itself in the US won't be an easy task. Its main competitors, Entrust Technologies of Texas, Verisign of California, and GTE Cybertrust of Massachusetts, all have a significant presence here. But Baltimore is relying on its clout in Europe and Asia-Pacific to help it win over US customers.

"We dominate our market in Europe and Asia," said Mr Tom Larson, senior vice-president for Baltimore Americas. "We've had a strong and growing presence in the Americas since the beginning of this year and we can compete."

Baltimore's strengths were highlighted at the launch of its PKI Solutions Showcase, the first in a series of 12 to be held throughout the US. Some analysts have said that Americans can look askance at a foreign vendor and so a European vendor, like Baltimore, needs to prove itself.

But Mr Rooney remains undaunted. "Baltimore's objective is of being the leader," he said. "`We win any bid based on our technology and we only build a product if it's the first, only, or best in its space.

While he was in New York he held back-to-back meetings in the Marriott hotel and even conducted a teleconference. When he finally sat down with this reporter, he said, "our commitment to the US is extremely strong." Baltimore's first focus in this country, he said, is to build up a sales infrastructure and a "pipeline of customers."

Winning Deutsche Bank as a client, he expects, "will bring in Bankers Trust as a potential customer." Deutsche Bank last month completed its acquisition of Bankers Trust, one of the US's foremost financial institutions.

Mr Rooney said customer service is so important that Baltimore is generating support on a global and local basis with call centres open around the clock. Baltimore has set up a Trusted World Program of technical alliances, value-added resellers and system integrators to sell its products.

So far, the program has 50 members, including Cisco Systems, KPMG, IBM, Netscape and Hewlett-Packard. One of its partners, EDS, was a co-sponsor of the PKI seminar.

Baltimore will also initiate marketing programmes and invite selected people to its series of seminars in the autumn. After educating people about the company and demonstrating its Unicert product, Mr Rooney said, he expects to "close deals".

Having 30 per cent of the PKI market in Europe and big-name customers in more than 40 countries certainly won't do Baltimore any harm. It currently has put out 110 bids worldwide and of the 22 decisions already made, it has won 15.

Since merging with Zergo Holdings of Britain in January, the company has grown to 500 staff in 13 offices in eight countries. "Our real focus was to get big fast," said Mr Rooney. "The market is evolving so quickly, we had to take leaps."

He said that with Zergo the company had combined revenues of $30 million (€29.32 million) last year and is listed on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol BLM. "Clearly Nasdaq is now a serious consideration for us," said Mr Rooney. "We have engaged bankers and lawyers in the US to see what approach we should take."

He expects Baltimore to have cornered 20 per cent to 25 per cent of the PKI market in the US in the next two years. He also said Baltimore is to spend 30 per cent of its budget this year on research and development.

Mr Rooney's talk was followed by a demonstration of Unicert by Mr Caelen King, product manager. Mr King said that Unicert together with the developer toolkit, PKI-Plus, offer an open, scalable, multi-purpose certification authority that can support multiple keys and 12 different directories. The technology is manageable which means security policies can be applied across lines of business, users, segments and states, and digital certificates can be issued and managed.