[announce] OASIS Forms Provisioning Services Technical Committee

[Carol Geyer <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>]

OASIS Forms Provisioning Services Technical Committee to Standardize
Automated Provisioning for Enterprise Resources

Access360, Business Layers, Jamcracker, Novell, Oblix, OpenNetwork
Technologies, and Others Unite to Develop Provisioning Specification

Boston, MA, USA; 6 November 2001--OASIS, the XML interoperability
consortium, announced that its members have formed the OASIS
Provisioning Services Technical Committee to define an XML-based
framework for exchanging user, resource, and service provisioning
information. The new OASIS Technical Committee will collaborate to
develop the Provisioning Services Markup Language (PSML), an end-to-end
specification for the automation of user or system access and
entitlement rights to electronic services.

"PSML will provide the framework for standards-based interoperability in
the provisioning market," explained Darran Rolls of Waveset
Technologies, chair of the OASIS Provisioning Services Technical
Committee. "Today, provisioning vendors and enterprise systems resource
vendors use proprietary APIs and data models for security
administration. Our goal at OASIS is to open the interfaces between
multiple provisioning systems--as well as between the provisioning
system and the resources being managed."

"Provisioning is a key component of Web services," noted Patrick Gannon,
president and CEO of OASIS. "Whether you're talking about provisioning
accounts into a partners' extranet, an outsourced application, an
Application Service Provider (ASP), or a trading exchange, ultimately
all these areas are going to be offered as Web services. Without a
standardized approach, provisioning will add a significant
administrative burden to Web services. The OASIS Provisioning Services
Technical Committee will provide a fundamental benefit to enable Web
services as a practical business tool."

In keeping with the consortium's mission to promote convergence and
unite disparate efforts, the OASIS Provisioning Services Technical
Committee will consider contributions of related work from other groups
and companies. The XRPM (eXtensible Resource Provisioning Management)
Working Group, the Active Digital Profile (ADpr) Initiative and
developers of the Information Technology Markup Language (ITML) all plan
to submit specifications to the new OASIS technical committee.

"Provisioning systems are an integral part of the identity and access
management infrastructure for both large enterprises and trading
communities. The OASIS initiative to develop a new XML-based standard
for provisioning systems to interoperate with each other removes a major
obstacle to the deployment of effective account management strategies
that span applications, platforms, and corporate boundaries," said Phil
Schacter, VP & Director of the Burton Group. "It's only through broadly
supported collaboration that we can achieve convergence on a single
standard, which the industry can leverage to deliver truly effective
solutions to customer provisioning problems."

Organizations collaborating on the OASIS Provisioning Technical
Committee include Access360, Business Layers, Jamcracker, Novell, Oblix,
OpenNetwork Technologies, and other OASIS Contributors and Individual
members. Participation is open to all OASIS members; interested parties
will find information on joining OASIS at
http://www.oasis-open.org/join.

OASIS will host an open mail list, pstc-comment@lists.oasis-open.org,
for public comment on Provisioning Services. Completed work will be
freely available to the public without licensing or other fees.

Industry Support for PSTC

"We are glad to have so many corporations come together in support of
developing a standard for open provisioning interfaces for this
industry. As a founder of the XRPM working group, Access360 is gratified
to see our predecessor work in XRPM being considered as part of the
PSTC," said Jeff Curie, director of enterprise strategy for Access360.
"We look forward to actively contributing to the efforts of the PSTC to
define standards for provisioning systems to interoperate between each
other and with managed resources."

"Having introduced the concept of eProvisioning to the marketplace, and
as the first company to push for a standardized technology framework for
eProvisioning solutions, Business Layers is excited to be a part of an
OASIS standards initiative that will ultimately increase the value of
the technology for our clients," stated Adrian Viego, CTO of Business
Layers. "As enterprises around the world continue to embrace
eProvisioning as a critical component of their IT infrastructure, the
PSML specification will help our entire sector deliver solutions in a
timely, effective and vendor-neutral manner.  We heartily endorse the
standardization efforts of OASIS and look forward to adding our
expertise to the process."

"Automated provisioning is one of the key success factors to the rapid
delivery of web services.  Through the ability to have automated
provisioning of distributed services, users will be able to rapidly
access new services as they need them and IT will be relieved of the
complex challenge of manual provisioning, subsequently reducing costs
and optimizing time-to-service," said Bruce Hartsough, Vice President of
Engineering, Jamcracker.  "Jamcracker is excited to apply its extensive
experience in delivering services over the Internet and be a direct part
of this groundbreaking effort to define a standards approach to
interoperable and automated provisioning." said Bruce Hartsough, vice
president of Jamcracker's Engineering.

"Novell's one Net vision is founded upon a commitment to open standards,
and so we're very pleased to see the cooperation of industry leaders to
develop a standard approach to provisioning," said Winston Bumpus,
director of standards for Novell. "Today eProvisioning solutions from
Novell are helping many customers lower costs and increase security by
automating business processes. The creation of a provisioning standard
will no doubt enhance the scope of those solutions--and bring greater
value to customers--by enabling improved interoperability among
businesses, their clients and partners."

"Interoperability is a key part of empowering businesses in today's fast
changing, diverse network environment. OASIS has always encouraged
collaboration among industry leaders to make better progress toward
interoperability and thus, we are fully supportive of this new OASIS
Provisioning Technical Committee," says Enrique Salem, senior vice
president of products and technology, Oblix.

About OASIS

OASIS is the XML interoperability consortium, advancing collaboration,
convergence and adoption of open specifications for structured
information exchange. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda,
using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry
consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS is the home for XML
conformance, web services, security, business transactions, electronic
publishing, topic maps and other interoperability specifications
development.

OASIS and the United Nations jointly sponsor ebXML, a global framework
for electronic business data exchange. OASIS operates XML.org, a
community clearinghouse for XML application schemas, vocabularies and
related documents. OASIS hosts The XML Cover Pages, an online reference
collection for interoperable markup language standards.

OASIS has more than 400 corporate and individual members in 100
countries around the world. OASIS sponsors include Accenture, Access360,
Adobe Systems, Agital, Altova, Arbortext, Auto-trol, Aventail, Baltimore
Technologies, BEA Systems, Bentley Systems, The Boeing Company,
Bowstreet, Business Layers, Business Logic Corporation, Chrystal
Software, Cincom Systems, Citrix Systems, Cohesia, Commerce One,
Critical Path, CrossLogix, Cyclone Commerce, DataChannel, Divine,
Documentum, EADS Airbus SA, EDS, election.com, empolis, Engage, Enigma,
Epicentric, Excelergy, eXcelon, Extricity, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard,
IBM, Identrus, Infoteria, Innodata, Intel, Interwoven, IONA, IPNet
Solutions, ITEDO, Ivis Group, Jamcracker, Logistics Management
Institute, Macromedia, Mercator, Microsoft, Neocore, Netegrity,
Netscape/AOL, NextPage, NII Enterprise Promotion Association, Nimble
Technology, NIST, Novell, Oblix, OpenNetwork Technologies, Oracle,
Pearson Education, Popkin Software, Reed Elsevier, Republica, Reuters
Limited, SAA Consultants, Sabre, SAP, Securant, SeeBeyond, Silverstream,
SoftQuad Software, Software AG, Sterling Commerce, StreamServe, Sun
Microsystems, Sybase, Tata Consultancy Services, The Tamalpais Group,
Thomas Technology Solutions, Tibco, Unisys, US Defense Information
Systems Agency, Verticalnet, Virtual Access Networks, Vitria,
webMethods, Whitehill Technologies, Xerox, XML Global and Xyvision
Enterprise Solutions.

For more information:
Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209