Companies Demo Interoperability of SPML OASIS Standard

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

**Link to this release at
http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis-news-2006-06-14.php 

Companies Demonstrate Interoperability of Service Provisioning Mark-up Language
(SPML) OASIS Standard

BMC Software, CA, Citrix, Oracle, Sun, and Others Collaborate on Service
Provisioning InterOp at Burton Catalyst 06 
 
San Francisco, CA, USA; 14 June 2006 -- Six international companies joined
together to demonstrate interoperability of the Service Provisioning Mark-up
Language (SPML) version 2.0 at the Burton Catalyst 06 conference in San
Francisco today. Developed by the OASIS Provisioning Services Technical
Committee, SPML is an approved OASIS Standard that lets companies manage the
provisioning and allocation of identity information and system resources within
and between organizations.

"The SPML OASIS InterOp at Catalyst is a milestone in the development of a
standards-based approach for the management of user identities across
heterogeneous applications," stated Mark Diodati, analyst for Burton Group's
Identity and Privacy Strategies. "Products that leverage SPML can help
organizations provide user access to resources without custom provisioning
connectors."

The Catalyst demonstration scenarios involve a group of companies that
outsource various services to application service providers (ASPs). Each ASP
publishes a SPML interface for provisioning accounts. Each company uses a SPML
client that makes provisioning requests to the ASPs as needed. The roles of
company and ASP are interchangeable among all six InterOp participants. 

"Both provisioning vendors and their customers benefit from the increased
standardization that 
SPML 2.0 offers," said Jeff Bohren of BMC Software, co-chair of the OASIS
Provisioning Services Technical Committee and participant in the InterOp.
"Today's demonstration showed how smoothly SPML interoperates among products
and users, resulting in lower costs and quicker implementations. The range of
systems that support SPML is exciting, and demand in the marketplace for SPML
support continues to grow."

Members of the OASIS Provisioning Services Technical Committee include
representatives of BEA Systems, BMC Software, CA, Capgemini, Hewlett-Packard,
IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, SOA Software, Sun Microsystems, and others.
Participation remains open to all, and suppliers, end-users, and systems
integrators are invited to join OASIS to advance the continued development and
adoption of SPML. OASIS hosts an open mail list for public comment and the
spml-dev mailing list for exchanging information on implementing the standard.

Companies Collaborate on SPML Interoperability

BMC Software
"BMC Software is delighted to participate in the SPML 2.0 OASIS InterOp," said
Doron Cohen, CTO, Identity Management Business Unit, BMC Software. "BMC has
been a strong supporter and active contributor to the development of SPML 2.0
since its inception. By supporting and promoting interoperable identity
provisioning, we are helping our customers to be better positioned to build an
identity-aware business."

CA
"Broad support for security standards such as SPML is a key component of CA's
identity and access management strategy," said Gavenraj Sodhi, director of
product management for security management at CA and co-chair of the OASIS
Provisioning Services Technical Committee. "The interoperability enabled by the
support of SPML ensures that our customers can efficiently integrate IT
administration and readily extend critical identity services beyond their
organizational boundaries."

Citrix
"Citrix is delighted to lead the Enterprise Single Sign-On market in supporting
SPML v2, as this standard opens the door to universal interoperability with
User Provisioning solutions and ultimately delivers the best access experience
for end users by eliminating the need to manually enter application
credentials," said Derek Thorslund, Senior Manager, IAM Products, Citrix
Systems.

Oracle
"The SPML OASIS Standard provides business value by helping to lower process
integration costs and enabling the secure propagation of identity information
beyond the enterprise," said Prateek Mishra, director, Security Standards,
Oracle. "As part of our commitment to helping organizations secure their
systems and extend the value of their IT investments, we have made SPML a core
element of OracleŽ Identity Manager. Oracle's support of SPML throughout our
family of identity and access management products and Oracle Fusion
applications helps organizations implement a comprehensive identity lifecycle
to manage access to sensitive applications and networks that encompass
customer, supplier and partner ecosystems."

Sun Microsystems
"Sun continues to drive identity management and Web services standards both
through our participation with organizations such as OASIS and the Liberty
Alliance, and by providing full support for the latest standards within our
products," said Bill Smith, director of business alliances at Sun Microsystems.
"Sun is proud to have been a supporter of SPML since its inception, and we are
pleased to showcase SPML 2.0 interoperability between Sun Java System Identity
Manager and other vendors products at the Burton Catalyst Conference."

HP
"As a member of the OASIS Provisioning Services Technical Committee, HP is
pleased to see this new standard ratified and will support it in OpenView
Select Identity. Enterprise customers significantly benefit from SPML v2.0 as
it standardizes previously proprietary mechanisms such as password management,
thereby reducing total cost of ownership, maintenance, and integrations with
their IT infrastructure," said Richard Hawes, Senior Product Manager for HP
OpenView Identity Management. "HP's goal is to benefit enterprise customers by
accelerating the adoption of SPML v2 among enterprise application vendors, in
addition to user provisioning vendors. Leading provisioning products such as
Select Identity have been using SPML v1.0 for some time as a core component of
their management interfaces, and the real breakthrough will be realized when
the application targets, such as enterprise applications and application
platforms, natively support SPML v2.0."

Additional Information: 

OASIS Provisioning Services Technical Committee
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/provision/
 

About OASIS:

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is
a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development,
convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the
OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to
promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces
open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization
efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in
1993, OASIS has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600
organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards
include AVDL, BCM, CAP, DITA, DocBook, DSML, ebXML CPPA, ebXML Messaging, ebXML
Registry, EDXL-DE, EML, OpenDocument, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WSDM,
WS-Reliability, WSRF, WSRP, WS-Security, XACML, XCBF, and XML Catalogs.
http://www.oasis-open.org


Press contact:

Carol Geyer
Director of Communications, OASIS
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209