Addressing the industry's move towards services on demand, Sun Microsystems has announced a new software solution designed to let companies centrally manage user identity and share this information across multiple applications on an e-business Web site or portal.
iPlanet Directory Server, Access Management Edition 5.0, builds on Sun's existing iPlanet Directory Server enabling customers to maintain personalised information access, create tighter security, and leverage integrated communications with partners.
Lodewyk de Beer, consultant SEAME (South Europe Middle East Africa) architecture strategy team at Sun Microsystems SA, says the challenge is to create an open directory for authentication and authorisation - one that can be leveraged by any provider or consumer of these services on demand.
"Edition 5.0 is a powerful new software solution which allows users to create an open standards based network identity environment that could be used throughout multiple industries to authenticate and authorise individuals for transactions."
Authentication, he says, is basically the level of assurance that verifies an individual's identity.
"It may be my mother's maiden name for a retail transaction or a retinal scan for classified information. Once authorised, the individual is permitted to carry out the transaction. An example is that a cellphone user can only make international calls once authenticated via the cellular network," says De Beer.
The latest announcement from Sun Microsystems highlights the company's commitment to supporting emerging technology standards, including those from the recently formed Liberty Alliance Project, an organisation of industry-leaders dedicated to creating an open, federated single sign-on identity solution for the digital economy.
With more than 650 million licences sold to date, the iPlanet Directory Server already powers some of the largest e-commerce, enterprise, and consumer Web sites and portals. A key component of the Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE), iPlanet Directory Server provides a central repository for storing context, preferences and other user specific attributes.
These are critical for delivering individualised content as envisioned by Sun ONE and future standards like those to be defined by the Liberty Alliance Project.
"The ability of companies to understand and manage the identity of their user communities will be one of the single most important success metrics of the next decade," says Stuart Wells, senior vice president of iPlanet Product Development at Sun Microsystems. "The open standards, multi-platform support and massive-scalability inherent in the iPlanet Product Line make it the choice as a foundation for open, federated identity across the Internet."
As part of the new iPlanet Directory Server, Access Management Edition, Sun now offers an integrated policy and identity management solution that enables global authentication and authorisation based on centralised access management policies. Tightly integrating the iPlanet Directory Server with policy and user management simplifies administration of users, provides more secure authentication and privacy rights and provides a single user identity across a range of web and application services.
In addition to all of the features in the core iPlanet Directory Server product, the new Access Management Edition includes:
. Web-based Single Sign-on, which enables a user to access multiple Web-based applications or services during a single session. Web Single Sign-On greatly enhances overall user experience and solves one of the most complex IT problems today.
. Policy Management that gives companies an easy, centralised way to control which applications and information will be available to their employees, customers, partners and suppliers.
. Delegated Administration features that give companies a practical way to delegate administration of user policies to departmental managers, business partners or even end-users themselves.
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