Definition: Open Market

(Open Market, Inc., Cambridge, MA) A software company founded in 1994 by Shikar Ghosh and David Gifford that specialized in Web e-commerce. Its Transact system enabled Web servers to conduct secure order fulfillment using credit cards and other payment systems. Open Market was the first company to provide a single point of access control, user authentication and financial processing to multiple content servers (online storefronts, cybermalls, internal websites, etc.). In 2001, the company was acquired by divine, inc., which two years later, sought bankruptcy protection. Its content management assets were sold to FatWire Software, Mineola, New York in 2003.