SAN FRANCISCO, April 18 /PRNewswire/ --

- Program Builds upon Close Cooperation between Liberty Alliance and OASIS

Liberty Alliance, the global consortium for open federated identity standards and identity-based Web services, today announced that it will extend its interoperability testing program to include SAML 2.0, with its first testing event planned for July 2005. The Liberty Interoperable(TM) Logo Program has been offered by the Liberty Alliance since 2003, and 15 vendors with more than 30 products have successfully completed the program. Liberty Alliance is currently the only organization offering a quality assurance logo program for the interoperability of products implementing open standards for federation and single sign-on, as well ass identity-based Web services

"Enterprise customers who are deploying federated identity programs do not want to worry whether or not their solutions interoperate with their business partners," said Roger Sullivan, vice president for Oracle's Identity Management Solutions and chair of Liberty's Conformance Expert Group. "Vendors who've passed this test offer their customers the highest degree of assurance that yes, they do interoperate. Interoperability testing is a strategic initiative for Liberty and provides the necessary assurances that federated identity standards work."

Since inception, the Liberty Alliance has been committed to programs and processes that deliver maximum value to its membership, and encourage marketplace strength. Rapid deployment of specifications, interoperability with open standards and a drive toward convergence have been core to that work. As part of this commitment, Liberty signed a Memo of Understanding (MOU) with OASIS in October 2004, with the two organizations agreeing to cooperate on programs and activities such as this. OASIS and Liberty share many members in common, most of whom contributed extensively to the development of SAML within the OASIS Security Services Technical Committee.

"Interoperability testing and the support of key organizations like Liberty are essential to advancing adoption of the SAML v2.0 OASIS Standard," said Andy Moir, OASIS Director of Business Development. "We are pleased to see Liberty's efforts to ensure interoperability for vendor implementations that incorporate the SAML v2.0 OASIS Standard."

The Liberty Interoperable(TM) Logo Program measures interoperability among vendor implementations against specified profiles and schema, and requires that vendors interoperate with at least two other vendors. This process involves pairwise testing of use cases that adhere to the modes defined in the SAML 2.0 OASIS Standard. Liberty also captures the actual testing directly off the wire so that vendors can have an official record of their performance. Upon successful completion of the test, Liberty issues a logo to those vendors who have signed Liberty's trademark agreement. The logo is issued to a specific version of a specific product-not to the product family-again offering buyer assurance that individual versions of products are indeed interoperable in a stated manner.

"SAML 2.0 offers a renewed focus on interoperability, since the OASIS Standard combines the previous efforts of Liberty Alliance ID-FF, SAML 1.x and Shibboleth into a single specification," said senior analyst Gerry Gebel of Burton Group. "We're happy to see these organizations working together, and we recognize the benefit for the marketplace in formal testing programs that validate actual interoperability as well as specification conformance integrity."

The first tests of the SAML 2.0 OASIS Standard will be held in July 2005, joining ID-FF (all versions) and ID-WSF (all versions) testing.

About the Liberty Interoperable(TM) Logo Program

The Liberty Interoperable(TM) Logo program, managed by the Liberty Alliance, validates implementations of the Liberty Alliance standards for federated network identity. The program helps vendors, integrators and implementers ensure interoperability between Liberty-enabled solutions. Liberty Alliance offers regular testing events, continually expanding the test portfolio. Interested parties should contact Liberty Alliance at info@projectliberty.org for logistics and registration information. The program is open to both members and non-members.

Fifteen vendors have earned the logo for various implementations on ID-FF and ID-WSF. These vendors include: Alcatel, Computer Associates, Elios, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, NEC, Nokia, Novell, NTT, Oracle, Ping Identity Corporation, Sun Microsystems Inc, Symlabs and Trustgenix Inc.

About the Liberty Alliance

Liberty Alliance (http://www.projectliberty.org) is an alliance of more than 150 companies, non-profit and government organizations from around the globe. The consortium is committed to developing an open standard for federated network identity that supports all current and emerging network devices. Federated identity offers businesses, governments, employees and consumers a more convenient and secure way to control identity information in today's digital economy, and is a key component in driving the use of e-commerce, personalized data services, as well as Web-based services. Membership is open to all commercial and non-commercial organizations.

Web site: http://www.projectliberty.org

Russ DeVeau, The devComm Group for Liberty Alliance, Office, +1-718-263-1762, or Mobile, +1-908-251-1549, russ@devcommgroup.com; or Jane Gideon of Incendio International for Liberty Alliance, US, +1-415-682-9292, or UK, +44-1483-549-035, jane@incendiopr.com