Liberty Alliance Finalizes Second Set Of Standards

The group's Liberty Identity Web Services Framework rounds out the organization's previously released Federation Framework, a technology that would enable users to access services on several Web sites using only one username and password. The latest set of standards would enable user identity to be shared among Web sites based on emerging Web-services standards, such as SOAP, XML and WS-Security.

The alliance - started two years ago by Sun Microsystems to counter Microsoft's own authentication system, called Passport - also said that it had formed an expert group to begin work on extending the group's identity frameworks to services that target specific industries, applications, and business models. About 50 percent of the alliance members are high-tech users, rather than vendors.

The initial work will focus on building framework interfaces, based on extensible markup language (XML), for geo-location, presence, and contact-book services, alliance officials said.

Geo-location services involve using technology to find specific geographical locations. For example, a wireless carrier could offer a service that would find the nearest restaurant or hotel to a customer visiting a foreign country.

Presence services could be used by carmakers to help organizations providing emergency services to locate stranded motorists. Contact-book services could be used by Amazon.com to share a customer's shipping information with a delivery company.

The alliance Services Group, announced Wednesday, is in the process of gathering business requirements for the three services before embarking on any technology development.

Among the companies announcing support for the alliance Web services framework is telecommunications company Vodafone Group PLC. Some analysts believe wireless carriers and telecom companies are among those that could benefit the most from the alliance's work.

"The telecoms are most interested in federated identity, because of the ability to offer a range of next-generation services to their customers," said Jason Bloomberg, analyst for market researcher ZapThink.

Being able to share a customer's identity would enable telecoms to provide partners' services to cellular-phone users, who would be charged for the additional services in one telephone bill, Bloomberg said.

"This could be a very likely place that Liberty Alliance standards will gain a foothold," he said.

Beyond technology, the alliance has also taken on the task of developing best practices for businesses interested in deploying its services to protect consumers from privacy violations.

Though the alliance's raison d'etre was to counter Microsoft Passport work, the business models of the two efforts have become "apples and oranges," Bloomberg said.

While Microsoft has offered Passport as a single sign-on service for consumers looking to buy from multiple retail sites, Liberty Alliance is focused more on what technology companies could use under the covers to share information, with customer permission, with partners, Bloomberg said.

This story courtesy of TechWeb