RE: [saml-dev] SAML Usage Statistics?

["Mark Wilcox" <mark.wilcox@webct.com>]

When it comes to topics such as this, statistics are meaningless until it
becomes the de-facto choice. Until then (and even sometimes after :) -- it's
always a hard sell.

Also SAML by itself is fairly non-descriptive and looks very
hard/complicated. Heck, I didn't fully realize exactly how it all works
together until about a month ago and I've been around SSO, XML & SAML for a
few years :).

Further complicating current SAML implementations is that there are still
not real clear answers on how to handle things such as standard user
identity, attribute exchange or security assertions.

Instead, I would not focus on SAML itself, but rather on adopting a more
abstract platform that is built on SAML, but provides a bit of help along
the way in the form of Apache modules, IIS & Java support because if someone
can just swap out one Apache module for another - viola - you got a SSO
system based on SAML & they don't know or care.

There are plenty of vendors out there that have systems such as this (search
on Project Liberty & you should get a list :). Or you might even consider
looking at Shibboleth (http://shibboleth.internet2.edu) which is primarily
an inter-organization, open-source SSO system, primarily designed for higher
education (the space I'm most familiar with), but could be adopted by
others.

Mark


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Barton Stanley [mailto:barton-stanley@swbell.net]
> Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2004 5:05 PM
> To: saml-dev@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: [saml-dev] SAML Usage Statistics?
> 
> I'm attempting to determine if I can build a
> fact-based business case that justifies the adoption
> of SAML if an organization's business partners have
> not yet adopted it.
> 
> If an organization's business partners have not
> adopted SAML then if the organization does adopt it
> then it is left with the task of "selling" SAML to its
> partners if its investment in SAML is to pay off.
> 
> Are there any SAML usage statistics or any other
> information that might help me build the business case
> I describe above?
> 
> If this is not the proper forum for my query, I'd
> appreciate any pointers to other forums that might be
> more appropriate.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Barton Stanley
> 
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