Sun to unveil digital identification offering

[R. A. Hettinga]

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/2839790.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp


Posted on Mon, Mar. 11, 2002

Sun to unveil digital identification offering





SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Sun Microsystems Inc. will announce Tuesday
combined software, hardware and services to help corporations build a
system to manage the identity of employees, customers and others accessing
their network.

The Sun Open Net Environment Platform for Network Identity will allow
organizations to provide single sign-on to disparate applications, as well
as authenticate users and services and authorize transactions.

Sun is moving to thwart Microsoft Corp. from using its dominance in the PC
market to become a juggernaut in the nascent Web services market which
promises access to software over the Internet from any device. User
identification is necessary for Web services so companies can offer
services only to authorized people.

Sun spearheaded a coalition dubbed the ``Liberty Alliance'' to make sure
Web services providers and customers have a choice of software other than
Microsoft's, according to Jonathan Schwartz, chief strategy officer at Sun.

The new Sun offering competes head-on with Microsoft's Passport service,
which is required for Windows XP customers to use certain services. Sun's
Open Net Environment Platform ``is being presented directly to
(Microsoft's) Active Directory and Passport users,'' Schwartz said.

At the core of the Sun offering is the company's popular iPlanet Directory
Server software, as well as Sun Fire UltraSPARC III servers, StorEdge D2
storage array and the Solaris 8 operating system.

Sun's platform doesn't have the security issues that plague Microsoft, nor
is Sun a threat to potential Web services customers as Microsoft is by
delivering both the infrastructure and operating the service, Schwartz said.

``Passport is how Microsoft gets to you,'' the consumer, he said. ``Then
they offer you, from the MSN Money Central portal, financial services in
competition with the banking industry,'' he added.

Sun is hoping customers will build internal network identity management
systems and then use the Liberty Alliance specification -- due out mid-year
-- for enabling ``federated'' access to services and data across different
companies' networks.

``The (Sun) `Federated' approach is designed to prevent any one player from
getting too much control,'' said Dana Gardner, an analyst at Aberdeen Group.

Adam Sohn, product manager for Microsoft's .NET platform strategy, said
every vendor has security problems, including Sun.

``They're trying to stall the industry til they can catch up,'' Sohn said
of Sun. ``They're way behind.''

The Liberty platform will use open standards to allow companies to use
whatever software they want, rather than tying them to one software or
platform, Schwartz said.

Liberty Alliance was formed last September to counter Microsoft's .NET Web
services plans. The 40 Liberty Alliance members are gaining critical mass,
but analysts say there will need to be interoperability with Microsoft's
Web services technology for the market to take off.

``For this to be to in everyone's benefit for major vendors and users, at a
minimum, you have to have a way for the Microsoft world and the Liberty
Alliance world to speak to one another and, in the best case scenario,
merge their efforts into a single specification,'' said Dwight Davis of
Summit Strategies.

Sohn said Microsoft talks to Liberty Alliance representatives every week
and that there is a possibility the company may join at some point in the
future if, as long as Microsoft could protect its intellectual property.

``If our customers want it we're going to give it to them,'' he said.

The U.S. Department of Defense's Manpower Data Center has already deployed
Sun's Open Net Environment Platform to manage the digital identities of
about 27 million employees, contractors, veterans and dependents for the
Pentagon, Schwartz said.

``They're using it to provide their constituents access to the PX (on base
store), information about their benefits, updates on leave and earnings,''
among other things, he said.

To access those services, users have a single badge which is a smart card
that contains data on who they are and what services they are privileged to
access.

The Enterprise Edition of Sun's One Network Identity Platform is priced
starting at $149,995. It includes two Sun Fire 280R UltraSPARC III servers,
a 72 Gigabyte Sun StorEdge D2 storage array, Solaris 8 operating system and
the iPlanet Directory Server Access Management Edition 5 for managing up to
10,000 identities inside a firewall, which blocks intruders from getting
onto a network.

The Internet Edition, priced starting at $999,995, includes four of the
servers, a 145 Gigabyte storage array and similar software to manage up to
250,000 identities outside a firewall.



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© 2001 siliconvalley and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.siliconvalley.com


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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