Standards, vendors and end users

While SAML was first to market and WS-Federation has the biggest backers, it's the Liberty Alliance that may be the best bet for identity federation.

Word has come down about a new project to outsource your company's HR, payroll, and 401k management functions. Word has also come down that the project will revolve around an identity federation infrastructure between your company and three service providers. The goal is to provide Single Sign-On (SSO) for your users while leveraging each party's existing identity management and authentication system. All this will be done using a standardized Web services interface.

The only word that hasn't come down is which federation framework to go with: the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), the Liberty Alliance specifications, or the Web Services Federation (WS-Federation) specifications? That decision has been left to you.

The Web Services Federation and SAML are both dominated by vendors, the Liberty Alliance has the most participation by end users. Technoflak believes that standards are too important to leave to vendors and only participation by end users can insure quality.

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