Microsoft Corp., together with six of the industry's leading identity management vendors, today previewed interoperable federated identity management solutions based on the Web services architecture (WS-*). Software companies IBM Corp., Netegrity Inc., Oblix Inc., OpenNetwork Technologies, Ping Identity Corp., RSA Security Inc. and Microsoft have successfully concluded work demonstrating how their identity management technologies interoperate using the Web Services Federation (WS-Federation) specification, part of the WS Security set of specifications. In his Tech•Ed keynote address today, Andrew Lees, corporate vice president for Server and Tools Marketing at Microsoft, showed how federated identity management based on WS-Federation and the WS-* architecture will simplify the work of IT professionals as they seek to cut the cost and complexity of passing identity credentials across security and organization boundaries in a Web services environment.

"Connecting companies offers significant business benefits by streamlining processes and enabling new business opportunities. However, customers have said that connecting with their partners is too complicated and often not cost-effective," Lees said. "Today at Tech•Ed, we are showing the industry's ability to come together and deliver interoperable enterprise-class products for federated identity that dramatically simplify more-secure business-to-business commerce and collaboration using Web services standards."