Waveset Alliance Accelerates Development of Web Services Provisioning Standard
BEA Systems, Entrust and Sun Microsystems Join Waveset to Complete First XML-based Provisioning Solution
01 Apr 2003
Merrill Lynch Leads Industry of Early Adopters
AUSTIN, TX. - Waveset Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of secure identity management solutions, today announced it has teamed with industry leaders BEA Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: BEAS), Entrust, Inc. (Nasdaq: ENTU) and Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) in implementing the industry's first open, Web services-based provisioning interface to provide a standard mechanism for Web portals, application servers and service centers to generate provisioning requests within and across organizations. The prototype, based on the draft Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) specification, is designed to provide a standards-based framework for exchanging user, resource and service provisioning information between cooperating organizations. The joint effort validates the work of the OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) Provisioning Services Technical Committee (PSTC) which intends to submit its SPML 1.0 specification to the OASIS board for review in May 2003.
"Information integrity is a key requirement in providing critical financial services to our clients around the world," said Guy Pujol, First Vice President of the Merrill Lynch Global Private Client Technology Group, who managed the development of an initial SPML prototype for the company. "The implementation of standards-based provisioning ensures that our client- and partner-facing portals and applications can quickly and easily interface with complex enterprise systems using Web services to create a high-value, high-performance business model."
Business Benefits
Platforms and software solutions that conform to the SPML specification facilitate the automation of user or system access and entitlement rights to electronic services across diverse IT infrastructures, protecting customers from proprietary vendor solutions. For example, a supply partner (Company A) goes to its partner's (Company B) supply chain portal and requests access to its inventory data stored in a back-office system. In response, Company B initiates a request using SPML to communicate with Waveset's identity management software. After automatically acquiring the appropriate permissions, Waveset grants the appropriate access levels to Company A to gain access to the data it needs. This process takes place without the need for the portal environment to have an intimate understanding of the back-office environment.
To assure widespread adoption of the standard, Waveset is providing free of charge, a "Requesting Authority" (Company B-type) component to platform vendors, allowing them to easily incorporate with and leverage the SPML standard.
According to Darran Rolls, director of technology at Waveset and chair of the OASIS PSTC, the alliance brings the industry one step closer to deploying and managing secure Web services. "Interoperability is a key part of empowering businesses in today's fast paced and diverse IT environments. By developing an open, standard protocol for provisioning user, resource and service information, Waveset and its partners have made the rapid deployment of a comprehensive Web services model a reality for forward-thinking businesses."
Industry Support
"In a portal environment, understanding the qualifying factors of identity are key to delivering the right services and information to the right people at the right time," said Paul Patrick, chief security architect, BEA Systems. "The implementation of a provisioning services standard will be instrumental in helping our customers collaborate within and across organizations to provide unique, customized experiences to their end-users."
"As a leading vendor of standards-based digital identity, Web portal, and XML security solutions, Entrust has been paying close attention to the evolution of SPML," said Nigel Johnson, vice president of product management, Entrust Inc. "We have always focused on increasing the value and cost-effectiveness of our solutions by providing automated and transparent administration. SPML provides a new opportunity for Entrust to continue decreasing administrative costs for our customers without decreasing security."
"Sun realized early the importance of providing a secure, Network Identity enabled portal infrastructure," said Stephen Borcich, director, Identity Products, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "It is imperative that collectively we provide customers with a standards-based means by which to connect Web front-ends to back-end identity infrastructures, significantly reducing time to deployment and costs. The fact that Waveset is providing this interface as an open-source offering reflects their commitment to making Web services provisioning a reality."
About Waveset Technologies, Inc.
Waveset Technologies, Inc. is a provider of identity management software that enables the secure control of business initiatives across enterprise, intranet and extranet environments. Waveset's unique, noninvasive approach delivers rapid ROI while ensuring that customers' mission-critical information assets are protected. Founded by former executives at IBM, BMC, Microsoft and Novell, Waveset counts industry leaders such as GMAC Financial Services, Kraft Foods, First American Bank, The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway, American Red Cross, ProBusiness Services, Inc, Household International, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, 7-Eleven, Inc., Dynegy and numerous other Fortune 500 companies among its customers. Waveset is funded by Lightspeed Ventures Partners, Austin Ventures, Origin Partners, Silverton Partners, AV Labs, and other private investors.