Sun Increases Support for OpenID
Sun Increases Support for OpenID
May 9, 2007: Sun is scaling up its efforts for secure online identity management, announcing a new initiative to support OpenID.
With Web2.0 gaining momentum, OpenID is simultaneously gathering steam as a decentralised, single sign-in tool to streamline access across websites, and tackle the “login explosion”.
OpenID currently focuses on low-risk transactions such as blog comments, however, with Sun’s new initiative Sun says it is exploring what changes and practices are needed to make OpenID applicable to a broader spectrum of business and IT challenges.
Sun says it is actively encouraging participation from customers and technology partners through a series of activities and real-life implementations that are initially driven by Sun's Chief Technologist's Office.
“We're excited about finding ways to augment the use of OpenID with technologies that fill out the rest of the identity picture -- meeting web users' needs for autonomy and convenience while making it easy for web businesses and communities to meet stringent security and privacy obligations,” says Jim McHugh, vice president of software infrastructure marketing, Sun Microsystems.
“Sun has been participating actively in the community dialogue around OpenID and related technologies, and sees great potential for OpenID's use alongside enterprise-ready software infrastructure.”
Sun believes that the use of a decentralised technology like OpenID will be an appealing way to manage online accounts and that eventually, integration with existing technologies such as SAML and the Liberty Alliance's Identity Web Services Framework will become essential.
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