The "single sign-on" standard produced by the Liberty Alliance Project lets users who sign on to one Web site carry over that authenticated status when moving to other Web sites. It's based on another newly released standard, the Security Assertion Markup Language.
A more feature-rich second phase of Liberty is expected early in 2003, said Michael Barrett, vice president of Internet strategy for American Express and a member of the Liberty Alliance.
When Sun launched Liberty in September, it was a direct assault on Microsoft's Passport service, which handled single-sign on by using a centralised authentication site run by Microsoft. At the time, Sun Chief Executive Scott McNealy called Passport Microsoft's strategy to profit from owning users' personal information, while Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer derided Liberty, saying it had "has absolutely zero probability of mattering to the world."
Those days of acrimony are passing, though. Sun is receding to more of an advisory role while potential corporate users such as Fidelity Investments and Visa International are taking over more of the actual work involved in implementing the technology.
"In a year or two we'll look back and say, 'What was all the fuss about?'" Barrett said.
Adam Sohn, product manager for Microsoft's .Net Platform strategy, believes Liberty, Passport and other authentication schemes will effectively merge, the same way different banks once maintained separate, exclusive automated teller machine (ATM) networks, but now allow any bank card to work with any machine.
"Liberty is what Passport would have looked like if it was thought up by the likes of United Airlines and Visa International," said Illuminata analyst James Governor.
Passport once was an independent technology, but Microsoft is expanding by allowing Passport to "federate" with other authentication sites, quite possibly including Liberty. This more open-armed expansion of Passport will be released in 2003, Sohn said. The company will also let third-party companies perform services necessary to implement Passport.
As it stands, Passport, with an estimated 14 million users, according to Gartner Group, has many more participants than the brand-new Liberty. But a host of new Liberty-enabled products are expected.
Sun itself, which sells servers and Sun Open Network Environment ( Sun ONE) software for authenticating users and governing their access to computing resources, plans to announce its plans for incorporating Liberty into its Identity Server software package.
