Wednesday, 7 November 2007

Top Billing for PingFederate from Burton Group

In a recent report titled "Picking the Right Federation Product for the Job" by Mike Neuenschwander of Burton Group, PingFederate received front and center recognition as the best general purpose identity federation product on the market.

In the report, Mike outlines the fact that different requirements may require differing approaches to resolution.

Federation Product Category Tiers of Service

General Purpose Workforce portal, B2B
WAM extension WAM domain
Community Hub Exchange topology, hosted
Basic Connection Value chain topology, spokes
Web Services Application integration, services federation
Edge Federation router, value chain topology, spokes

Mike goes on to further differentiate 'stand-alone' from 'general purpose'.

Many vendors offer standalone federation servers…

Products install separately from web access management (WAM) and other IdM components

Products have minimal requirements on IdM infrastructure

… but may rely on IdM products for integration features

May rely on a particular version of WAM product for agents, web filters, SSO with Windows environments, and application integration

The WAM environment is a domain that needs federation

Usually best delivered by the vendor providing the WAM server

But the WAM server isn’t always the right place for federation

We've dedicated ourselves as a company to enabling, through identity, the secure connection of Point A to Point B, without bias, using open standards. The only way this internet identity portability problem will be resolved, will be to ensure that all infrastructure can leverage these new open standards. Our approach has always been to be the lightweight, easy to install and use, Switzerland of identity federation.