Liberty Alliance bears fruit

By Alun Williams

Posted on 16 Jan 2003 at 12:20

Sun has launched version 6.0 of its Sun ONE Identity Server. While this may catch the eye of certain system administrators, of wider interest is fact that it incorporates work from the Liberty Alliance. The would-be rival to Microsoft's .Net Passport is bearing fruit.

Sun claims that its new Identity Server is the industry's first 'open-standards based' network identity and access management system. It is built on Java and XML, as well as a Liberty foundation.

A key feature of the system is the ability to 'federate identities' - eg a single login can be propagated across trusted systems - via the Liberty Specification or SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language).

'We are raising the network identity bar,' boasts Sun's VP for network identity, Stephen Pelletier, 'by being the first to provide the secure delivery of business information, Web single sign-on, and federated identity framework our customers need for their new partner and customer revenue opportunities.'

As well as Solaris 8 and 9, the Identity Server supports Windows 2000 Server (SP2+) and Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server. You can find more info on Sun ONE Identity Server on the Sun Web site.

Do you remember the Liberty Alliance? It was formed back in September 2001 as an industry consortium to manage user identities in the world of Web services.

In Sun's words it is an attempt to 'develop and deploy an open, federated identity solution'. Think of it as an attempt to establish an alternative to Microsoft's .Net Passport vision.

Essentially, it is an organisation to create a standards-based, single sign-on identity system for digital commerce. It is intended to be operable from any device connected to the Internet, whether it be from desktop PCs, cellular phones, special credit cards, cars or point-of-sale terminals.