Sun Intros OpenID Program

SAN FRANCISCO -- Expanding its commitment to deliver secure web-scale identity management solutions, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW - News) today announced a new initiative around support for OpenID, a decentralized, web-friendly single sign-on mechanism that allows consumers to reuse a single login across different websites, tackling the "login explosion" problem. OpenID is currently limited to facilitating low-risk transactions such as blog comments. Through its new initiative, Sun is exploring what changes and practices are needed to make OpenID applicable to a broader spectrum of business and IT challenges. The company will actively encourage participation from customers and technology partners through a series of activities and real-life implementations that are initially driven by Sun's Chief Technologist's Office.

"We're excited about finding ways to augment the use of OpenID with technologies that fill out the rest of the identity picture -- meeting web users' needs for autonomy and convenience while making it easy for web businesses and communities to meet stringent security and privacy obligations," said Jim McHugh, vice president of software infrastructure marketing, Sun Microsystems. "Sun has been participating actively in the community dialogue around OpenID and related technologies, and sees great potential for OpenID's use alongside enterprise-ready software infrastructure."

As enterprises increasingly open up access to data and services to wider audiences and improve usability, the use of a decentralized technology like OpenID will be an appealing way to manage account proliferation. Integration with existing deployments, which often involve enterprise-ready technologies like SAML and the Liberty Alliance's Identity Web Services Framework will become an essential consideration. Sun is working with customers and partners to combine and converge these technologies to maximize effectiveness.

Sun Microsystems Inc.