Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Ping Strikes Back
« 5 Reasons to Upgrade to PingFederate 5.0 | Main | Introducing SPAML! »On January 24th, Sun Microsystems threw down the gauntlet by releasing this video. I guess our new Auto-Connect™ feature got their attention. Yea, Auto-Connect IS good marketing, but it's also real software, download it and see for yourself.
We didn't really know we were in an epic battle with Sun, but we can't be the leader without a challenger, and we won't be challenged without a response.
So, in the spirit of having a bit of fun with Sun (and ourselves), we prepared this response. Special thanks to Jeremy Rudel for selecting the scene of the battle, Mark Viens for his story telling genius, and Jeremy Hudson for his epic editing skills. Let the battle begin!
[Trackback URL for this entry]
Great response to the Sun video! You should post it on YouTube...
Daniel is right, that would be a good theme for you all at Catalyst :)
this video was awesome... you guys put some real thought into editing this "epic" !!!
loved the sountrack too...
but seriously folks.. as long as it's just humor from either ends.. alls fair.. I appreciate the stride that you folks have taken this humor in. Keep it that way. it's humor.. simply humor... nothing more.
we all need something to laugh about every now and then.. dont we ? ;-)
Guys, this is great. I met Andre and Steve back in 2003 and have been following you since. I AM A SUN CUSTOMER and what they did was just wrong.
Your video is excellent and will be long remembered.
Ping vs. Sun
Last week, a Sun blogger posted Sun versus Ping: An Epic Battle and included a video. The video is cute for about 30 seconds, then goes on to kick the dead horse to a fine paste. (seriously, it would’ve been funnier shorter) The Ping folks couldn...
I can't let credit for this epic battle scene go unrecognized. Our very own financial wizard, Jeremy Rudel selected the clip. Our fearless leader of client services, Mark Viens wrote the script, and Jeremy Hudson, master of all things binary put his video editing mojo skills to the test. Thanks guys. You truly do rock!
Hilarious stuff guys. Though, I have to say... I was looking forward to voice-overs! Andre as Leonidas? The whole crew shouting connections? Patrick as Daxos, Nate as a sales guy, etc...
"You have many employees, Scott, but few engineers. It won't be long before they fear my software more than your hardware."
Anyhow... Fun stuff. Nothing like a bit of fun rivalry to stir up the creative juices.
Finally did an interwrking trial between PingFederate 5.01 and opensso saml server (SUN).
It took 2 days to exercise all the SAML2 features, using POST profile, between two sites behind NAT firewalls.
1 day was spent with the partner learning UNIX configuration gotchas (certain white space data entry flaws killed several hours, whilst the server just refused to cooperate (apparently)).
Another day was spent exchanging metadata of various forms (we could not figure out how to signal that encrypted fields - vs entire assertions - should be communicated. This seems a SAML2 flaw.
In the opensso world, the partner stuggled mostly with key management tool sets, having to use clumsy java tools to manage key stores. With the Ping console, this was easy and a non-issue.
On scaling, we have about 100,000 users on our Ping cluster now, in about 20 virtual federation communities (each with their own hub/spoke networks). The cluster is based on high-end PCs ($5000 ish, with GBs of RAM)
The real value of auto-connect is going to play out if I can apply the ping server to learn 500,000 metadata sets that we just we issue for each of our homeowning consumers who talk to realtor sites(each group and each of its members acting as their own federation point, with its own signing key). Can the Ping servers internal switching mechanisms and keystores handle that size space? But then, I suppose I should ask, could send 500,000 metadata exports to opensso and have it react reasonably?
Fun times in applied federation.
Woah! Nice job guys! Love it. It's rare to have engineers with chiseled features like that. BTW, those would be great outfits for booth duty at Gartner or Burton. Cheers!