Liberty Alliance gathers momentum

The Liberty Alliance, a 150-strong consortium developing federated identity standards, yesterday demonstrated work in progress, having been further strengthened with the addition of Oracle, Intel, Computer Associates and seven other firms earlier this week.

AOL, Nokia, Sun Microsystems and Trustgenix demonstrated a business-to-consumer scenario using Liberty's specifications to enable a user to authenticate, discover and access a radio service on any device based on the user's identity, without entering additional user names and passwords.

And Vodafone, Nokia and Trustgenix demonstrated a mobile-to-consumer scenario in which a service provider can discover a user's location and respond accordingly.

The event marks the progress made towards the Alliance's goals of reducing the number of names and passwords users require to access websites and intranets, and make e-commerce transactions.

While the Alliance has appealed as an alternative to Microsoft's Passport system since its inception in September 2001, it has recently begun to win support from IT firms such as Intel and Oracle. Hewlett Packard is also a member.

"It was always thought that it would take time for the Liberty Alliance to gain industry support," said Andy Kellet, senior research analyst at Butler Group.

"It gives the Liberty Alliance renewed visibility and highlights a great divide among industry players with Microsoft looking increasingly isolated.

"Microsoft is likely to go its own way for a little while yet, but the consensus is that there will be a coming together eventually."

As sponsor members, Oracle, Intel and Computer Associates will receive access to the latest Liberty technical specifications as well as business and policy guidelines.

"Every wave of new members brings with it additional expertise and market insight that not only benefits new and existing members, but other companies seeking to find solutions to the security and implementation demands inherent in identity management," said Michael Barrett, president of the Liberty Alliance management board, and vice president of privacy and security at American Express.

See also:

Liberty Alliance strengthens ID-based web services

Latest specs offer privacy, personalisation and security benefits  13 Apr 2005

Stop network advances from adding complexity

Good networks are a pre-requisite for good work, but they're often the problem rather than the solution. William Knight asks whether productivity is about to be strangled by complicated systems  18 Oct 2004

Orange provides single sign-on

50 million mobile users have access to single sign-on  04 Aug 2004

Watch out: There's an ID thief about

Danny Bradbury reports on how businesses are coping with identity fraud.  15 Apr 2004

Intel joins Liberty Alliance

Chip giant adds weight to promotion of authentication and identity management  19 Mar 2004

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!