Novell will this week throw its weight behind the Liberty Alliance
Project, an initiative aimed at creating an open identity standard
for authenticating users on the Internet.
It will join other industry leaders including Sun, General Motors,
Nokia, United Airlines, AOL Time Warner and American Express, in
hammering out the business rules and technology components needed
for an alternative to Microsoft's Passport network identity model.
Passport has been criticised by those who fear the prospect of
network identity falling under the control of a single
vendor.
Novell intends to lend its experience in identity management and
single sign-on, including its eDirectory technology, to the policy,
marketing, and technology committees of the Liberty Alliance.
"Novell brings its expertise in identity management from the
enterprise and e-business space to the table," said Justin Taylor,
chief strategist for directory services at the company.
The company also plans to share lessons learned from an earlier
experiment with online identity management called digitalme. The
eDirectory-based user authentication service was launched in
October 1999, designed to give online users access to single
sign-on while maintaining control over personal information.
The Liberty Alliance has gathered significant momentum recently and
Microsoft has signalled that it may join the Liberty effort or link
its Passport technology to the Liberty effort.
Marge Breya, Sun's representative on the Liberty Alliance said: "No
single entity should have [control] of identity and preference
information. The goal of [the Liberty Alliance] is to allow
information to stay as it is today: with entities you trust," she
said.