IBM joins Liberty, is Microsoft to follow?
IBM joins Liberty, is Microsoft to follow?
IBM has joined a consortium of IT companies which aim to develop standards for managing user authentication services for online businesses, despite initially having a user identity scheme of its own.
IBM has agreed to join the consortium, Liberty Alliance, along with Oracle, Intel, Sun, HP, AOL, Novell, Sony and VeriSign.
IBM was initially not keen on joining the Liberty Alliance, which started in 2001, because of its own plans, but has now resorted to meeting the consortium's specifications due to customer demand.
IBM says that by working with Liberty Alliance, this should ensure that any standard use for identity management is in tune with the architectural framework of other web service specifications.
Microsoft might be the next big company to follow, having recently given up on it plans to make Passport, its own version of web authentication.
Monster has recently dropped its support for Passport, which was a huge blow to Microsoft, since the careers website was one of Microsoft's main Passport users.
Back in 1999, Microsoft thought that Passport would be used by thousands of online stores, providing users with the opportunity to sign on with the same user name and password used for Microsoft services.
However, many operators did not want Microsoft to control the access to their sites, so they rejected the plans.
The Liberty Alliance has been blamed for slowing down Passport's momentum. Microsoft has already said that they might join the consortium to meet interoperability demands.
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