What's Sun up to with identity management?

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: DAVE KEARNS ON IDENTITY MANAGEMENT
06/29/05
Today's focus: What's Sun up to with identity management?

Dear security.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* Sun releases two identity management initiatives
* Links related to Identity Management
* Featured reader resource
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Today's focus: What's Sun up to with identity management?

By Dave Kearns

I recently spent a delightful couple of hours with the always
engaging Sara Gates, Sun's vice president of identity, while she
told me about the company's new identity management initiatives:
Sun Java System Federation Manager and Sun Java System Identity
Manager Service Provider Edition.

Since I'm not aware that Sun has any other "system" besides the
"Sun Java System," we'll simply call these Sun Federation
Manager (SFM) and Sun Identity Manager for Service Providers
(SIM4SP). Whoever names products at Sun definitely needs an
editor.

SIM4SP, to my thinking, returns Sun to its identity roots. It
uses the Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) to bring
account and application provisioning to the service provider
market. This was actually the direction that Netscape - with its
Netscape Directory Server - was going at the time the company
was split between AOL and Sun (that's where AOL's Instant
Messenger came from). Sun took the identity management pieces
and (successfully, I might argue) went after the enterprise
business.

Truth to tell, the service providers really weren't ready for
provisioning services five years ago. But now they are and the
standards and protocols are ready. Sun can hopefully leverage
the speed and efficiency with which it acquired the Netscape
pieces and couple that with the provisioning expertise it got
along with its Waveset acquisition to provide a very good,
outward facing, Web-services provisioning product. Get all the
details from
<http://www.sun.com/software/products/identity_mgr_spe/index.xml>
especially if you're in the business of providing services to
others.

The Sun Federation Manager (SFM) is the latest entry in what
will shortly become a very crowded field as federation really
takes off both within the enterprise as well as among business
partners. SFM specifically targets the extranet, though, as it
aims to not only tie together business-to-business relationships
but also the one-to-many relationship of
business-to-client/customer. SFM is really a number of existing
products wrapped up with new specifications and protocols.

In his Weblog, Pat Patterson, a technical architect at Sun,
writes ( <http://www.networkworld.com/nldsv2905> ):

"So what, exactly, is Federation Manager? Well, it's the SAML
and Liberty technology that has been in Access Manager for the
past two or three years, built into a new product specifically
designed for the service provider. Doesn't Access Manager
already support service providers? Well, yes, it does, and it
will continue to do so. FM trades-off some of Access Manager's
more advanced features in favour of ease of use when
federation-enabling service providers."

And that's a better description than I could come up with.

Oops! I'm just about out of time and haven't gotten to my
conversation with BMC's Somesh Singh. Come back next time and
I'll tell all.
_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Dave Kearns

Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's
written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print
"Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be
found at Virtual Quill <http://www.vquill.com/>.

Kearns is the author of three Network World Newsletters: Windows
Networking Tips, Novell NetWare Tips, and Identity Management.
Comments about these newsletters should be sent to him at these

respective addresses: <mailto:windows@vquill.com>,
<mailto:netware@vquill.com>, <mailto:identity@vquill.com>.

Kearns provides content services to network vendors: books,
manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing,
technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill
provides "words to sell by..." Find out more by e-mail at
<mailto:info@vquill.com>
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Oracle
Boost the quantity and quality of customer interactions!

How can companies get a fuller, sharper picture of their
customers to boost the quantity and quality of customer
interactions? By creating a standardized customer-data model via
an "information grid." IDC analyst Stephen Hendrick explains how
to achieve a "360-degree view" of customers for better selling
and marketing.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=107425
_______________________________________________________________
ARCHIVE LINKS

Archive of the Identity Management newsletter:
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/dir/index.html
_______________________________________________________________
Fischer International

Gartner & Fischer: Leveraging the Future of Identity Management
and Compliance Gartner VP Roberta Witty and Fischer
International CTO Steve Tillery chart the future of Identity
Management and Compliance. What should every business do in
2005? What initiatives should be put on the back burner? What
technologies will finally simplify compliance and reduce cost?
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=107214
_______________________________________________________________
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