Excellent News Around Web Service Federation

Yesterday we published two articles on the concepts of a federated identity metasystem on the MSDN Web Services Developer Center.  Today we took the next step -- we published two new Web service specifications: Web Single Sign-On Interoperability Profile and Web Single Sign-On Metadata Exchange Protocol.

But what is really important about today's publications is who the authors on these specs are: Microsoft and Sun.  There was initially a lot of concern and a lot of downright competition on where a federated security system was going to come from.  Microsoft has Passport and was pushing the WS-* system and Sun (and others) created the Liberty Alliance to build a different system.  There was certainly a time where it seemed like the only solution was to take sides and hope you won the battle.  Instead today we are seeing Sun and Microsoft working together on building something that will work for everyone.

Seems like there should be inspirational music playing in the background as a tear comes to my eye. :-)

This is good news for everyone.

   -Matt