Seven Vendors Run Paces of SAML 2.0 Test

System integrators and VARs who help enterprises with their identity and access management (IAM) initiatives received just a little bit more market clarity about the interoperability of seven major vendors’ products yesterday. The Kantara Initiative and Liberty Alliance announced IAM products from Entrust, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Ping Identity, SAP and Siemens all passed the Liberty Interoperable SAML 2.0 test.

All seven vendors participated in a full-matrix test administered by Drummond Group from July through early September, which checked against the SAML 2.0 list of interoperability requirements for federated identity management.

"The summer 2009 full-matrix testing event included more vendors than ever before, reflecting the worldwide demand among enterprises and governments for SAML 2.0 identity-enabled solutions that have proven to interoperate," Roger Sullivan, president of the Kantara Initiative Board of Trustees, president of Liberty Alliance and vice president, Oracle Identity Management, said in a statement.

The idea behind SAML 2.0 is to offer a set of standards that ensures vendor customers that certified IAM products are battle-tested for numerous heterogeneous environment situations. Identity management tools that don’t play well together have long thrown up a stumbling block to enterprises seeking a federated IAM approach.

"SAML 2.0 is the most popular federation protocol in the industry and utilized by commercial, educational, and government institutions around the globe," said Gerry Gebel, VP and service director at Burton Group, in a statement. "Federated single sign-on demand is growing, spurred by broad adoption of SaaS applications and the general increase in collaboration among business partners in every industry. The Liberty Interoperable program is instrumental to sustaining successful deployments in advanced federation scenarios where multiple products are in use."

Channel partners looking for more information about the tested products can visit the Liberty Alliance <a href=http://media.projectliberty.org/saml_2_0_test_procedure_v3_2_2_full_matrix_implementation_table_q309/>website</a> for details.