Boston, MA, USA; 21 June 2004 — International standards consortium, OASIS, announced plans to advance oBIX (Open Building Information Xchange), a Web services implementation for the building management and controls industry. The new OASIS oBIX Technical Committee will define a standard method to enable mechanical and electrical systems in facilities and buildings to communicate with enterprise applications. oBIX is an example of the growing trend of vertical industries organizing within OASIS to develop standards that leverage Web services methods for their specific industry needs.

oBIX will be applicable to a wide variety of smart systems embedded in facilities, such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), elevators, laboratory equipment, life/safety systems, access control, intruder detection, audio visual event management, closed circuit television monitoring, and many others. oBIX will also provide access to information from sensing devices that are not typically part of control systems, delivering real-time access to sensors that measure or monitor the physical space in a facility, including environmental sensing, electrical panels, and power meters.

"Currently, there is no easy way for IT departments to integrate their enterprise systems with those that run their buildings. Yet facilities represent the largest physical asset most companies have. Using Web services to enhance the effectiveness of building control systems promises to have an enormous impact on an organization’s bottom line," said Ron Zimmer, President & CEO of the Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA). oBIX was originally established as a working group within CABA, which will continue its involvement through participation in OASIS.

"oBIX is an exciting example of applying Web services to solve a specific market requirement," added Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "The building controls industry recognized the need for a standard optimized for Internet technology. By choosing to advance this work within OASIS, CABA’s domain experts join together with developers of more than 14 Web services initiatives currently underway at our consortium. We believe that proximity to other OASIS Web services standards efforts will help foster interoperability and encourage reuse of related work."

"oBIX will improve operational effectiveness, giving facility managers and building owners increased knowledge and control of their properties. It will be a major step forward in fulfilling the vision of truly intelligent buildings," said Toby Considine of the University of North Carolina, proposed chair of the OASIS oBIX Technical Committee.

The OASIS oBIX Technical Committee is made up of users and vendors from all sectors of the building controls market, including the security, HVAC, building automation, open protocol, and IT disciplines. Current members are listed at http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/membership.php?wg_abbrev=obix, however, participation remains open to all organizations and individuals. OASIS also offers a mechanism for public comment on the work. The Technical Committee plans to prioritize oBIX development based on input from the community and particularly seeks use scenarios from those managing systems for large office buildings, universities, hospitals, etc.

"We intend to work with control protocols such as LonTalk (now known as ANSI/EIA/CEA709.1) and BACnet (ASHRAE/ANSI 135-2001, ISO 16484-5) so that oBIX can become the vehicle to take building systems to the TCP/IP layer in a consistent manner for the benefit of the enterprise. oBIX will also make it possible to integrate the many legacy proprietary control and monitoring systems in use today as well as future, native TCP/IP control systems," noted Paul Ehrlich of Trane, convener of the OASIS oBIX Technical Committee.

Anders Axelsson, senior vice-president of sales and marketing at Echelon, added, "We have been strong advocates of XML and Web services for enterprise-level interfaces and as a mechanism for data exchange amongst otherwise disconnected systems for some time. The combination of open control networks within buildings and oBIX open information exchange at the enterprise and gateway levels will, we believe, eliminate many of the complexities, confusion, and redundancies that can keep building owners and facility managers from reaping the many benefits of open systems."

About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces more Web services standards than any other organization along with standards for security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 3,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include CAP, DocBook, DSML, ebXML, SAML, SPML, UDDI, WSRP, WSS, XACML, and XCBF. http://www.oasis-open.org

More information:

OASIS oBIX Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/obix Cover Pages Technology Report: http://xml.coverpages.org/facilitiesXML.html oBIX Initiative: http://www.obix.org

Press contact:

Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

Boston, MA, USA; 5 May 2004 — The OASIS standards consortium today announced that its members have approved the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) version 1.0 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. CAP enables the exchange of emergency alert and public warning information over data networks and computer-controlled warning systems. By limiting transport-specific nomenclature, CAP remains remains fully compatible with existing public warning systems, including those designed for multilingual and special-needs populations, as well as with XML applications such as Web services.

"The CAP OASIS Standard has been designed to allow a consistent warning message to be communicated simultaneously over different systems," explained Allen Wyke, chair of the OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee. "By standardizing on a format, technology developers and vendors in the emergency, incident, and business continuity fields will be able to take a huge step forward in sharing this critical, and potentially life saving, information."

CAP is also expected to reduce costs and operational complexity by helping simplify the software interfaces needed to interact with the many sources and dissemination systems involved in all-hazard warnings.

The new OASIS Standard addresses emergencies and incidents that apply to both the private and public sectors. CAP has been implemented by U.S. national and local agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, the National Weather Service, the United States Geological Survey, California Office of Emergency Services, and the Virginia Department of Transportation as well as companies such as Blue292. CAP data elements have been incorporated in the U.S. Department of Justice’s "Global Justice XML Data Model."

"DHS/FEMA is extremely proud of the role we have played in the establishment of the CAP standard through our participation with OASIS," said Chip Hines, program manager for Homeland Security’s Disaster Management eGov Initiative. "We are pleased that our initiative has been able to demonstrate that the standard works across a variety of vendor products. We strongly support the development of standards that will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our nation to prepare for and respond to all emergencies. We intend to continue to use the OASIS process to further these goals."

"The implementation of CAP goes a long way toward making alert and warning more accessible to local governments via a plug-and-play environment," commented Elizabeth F. Klute, Community Warning System Manager for the Contra Costa County Office of the Sheriff Emergency Services in California.

About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces more Web services standards than any other organization along with standards for security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 3,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards include CAP, DocBook, DSML, ebXML, SAML, SPML, UDDI, WSRP, WSS, XACML, and XCBF. http://www.oasis-open.org

More information:

OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/emergency

Cover Pages: "XML and Emergency Management" http://xml.coverpages.org/emergencyManagement.html#oasis

Press contact:

Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

Boston, MA, USA; 19 April 2004 — The OASIS international standards consortium today announced that its members have approved the Web Services Security (WSS) version 1.0 (WS-Security 2004) as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. WSS offers a trusted means for applying security to Web services by providing the necessary technical foundation for higher-level services.

Gartner analyst, Ray Wagner, advised, "Enterprises should adopt WSS formatting for all across-the-firewall Web service deployments, even in cases where no security needs have been identified. Gartner believes that WSS will be the standard for the majority of Web services, and committing to it now will allow enterprises to easily modify the security profile of deployed Web services in the future."

WSS builds upon existing security technologies such as XML Digital Signature, XML Encryption and X.509 Certificates to deliver an industry standard way of securing Web Services message exchanges. Providing a framework within which authentication and authorization take place, WSS lets user apply existing security technology and infrastructure in a Web Services environment.

"By enabling applications to share information regarding network access regardless of the underlying platform, Web Services Security paves the way for broader adoption of Web services," said Chris Kaler of Microsoft, co-chair of the OASIS WSS Technical Committee. "The OASIS WSS TC is pleased by the support and commitment of the Web services community leading to the ratification of Web Services Security as an industry standard."

WSS handles complex confidentiality and integrity for SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) messages, providing a general-purpose mechanism for associating security tokens with message content. Designed to be extensible, WSS supports multiple security token formats.

"A client might provide one format for proof of identity and another format to verify their business certification," explained Kelvin Lawrence of IBM, co-chair of the OASIS WSS Technical Committee. "Using WSS, a system can authenticate the identity of a person connecting to several networks at once or pass data between two applications securely."

"The Web Services Security OASIS Standard represents a truly impressive collaboration from across the industry," noted Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "It is testament to the value of the open standards process where users and vendors, large and small, come together to advance a common good. WSS delivers a much-needed foundational technology that will enable Web services to be deployed with confidence."

Industry Support for WSS

Booz Allen Hamilton "The approval of Web Services Security is a large step forward in enabling increasingly secure interoperability between Web Services-based systems both inside and outside enterprise boundaries," said Steven Lewis, Senior Consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton. "This will enable our clients to achieve even greater benefits from using Web Services, and we look forward to applying OASIS Web Services Security in our client solutions."

Commerce One "Securing messages sent using Web services is critical to the widespread deployment of Web services for integrating systems at the ‘edge-of-the-enterprise.’ We have been very active in the development of this important standard and have implemented it as part of a comprehensive security solution in our Conductor Platform," said David Burdett, Director of Standards Strategy at Commerce One.

Computer Associates "OASIS Web Services Security will help ensure and streamline the implementation of security policies across complex environments and multiple business relationships. CA will continue to work closely with other industry leaders and with OASIS to develop practical standards that enable our customers to create trusted relationships, resulting in improved business performance and new revenue opportunities." said Dmitri Tcherevik, director of Web services at Computer Associates.

Cordance "WSS 1.0 is a key building block of the trust infrastructure required by many other Web Services. The OASIS XDI (XRI Data Interchange) Technical Committee intends to use WSS 1.0 as a primary means of ensuring the security of trusted data sharing relationships using XDI. This is another example of how modular Web Services specifications developed by OASIS and other standards bodies can work together to build the next layer of the Web," said Drummond Reed, CTO, Cordance Corporation, Co-Chair of the OASIS XRI and XDI Technical Committees.

Fujitsu "Fujitsu is very pleased to learn that Web Services Security (WS-Security 2004) has been ratified as an OASIS Standard with wide industry support. Fujitsu believes that this open and interoperable security standard will accelerate the adoption and deployment of Web services suitable for real business applications," said Seigo Hirosue, General Manager of Strategy and Technology Division, Software Group of Fujitsu Limited.

HP "Standards-based, secure Web services technologies are the foundation of open, flexible, business-centered computing systems. Approval of the OASIS Web Services Security specifications is an important step in building a complete suite of open Web services standards. Implementations of these specifications will help HP and our customers to adapt IT resources to enterprise needs rapidly and securely," said David Shoaf, director, Software Standards Marketing, HP.

IBM "IBM is pleased to see Web Services Security become an OASIS Standard. Customers have been asking for an industry standard way of signing and securing Web services message exchanges, and the industry has clearly been looking to the OASIS Web Services Security Technical Committee to deliver a quality specification. IBM already offers support for earlier drafts of WS-Security in many of our WebSphere and Tivoli products and this new OASIS Standard will be fully supported across the IBM software portfolio," said Arvind Krishna, vice president of provisioning and security development, Tivoli Software, IBM.

Microsoft "The ratification of Web Services Security as a standard is a significant milestone for Web services and the industry overall. Web Services Security is supported broadly across the industry, with numerous implementations from vendors available today as evident by our customers leveraging Web Services Security capabilities. We will continue our support for the standard with plans to implement the technology in our Web Services Enhancements (WSE) offering. We look forward to continued progress, adoption and implementation of Web services, and continuing our commitment to work with the industry to provide a common set of industry standards for secure, reliable and transacted Web services," said Dave Mendlen, director of Web services technical marketing for Microsoft.

Nokia "Nokia is pleased to see the timely release of these open security standards. This will enable interoperable web services security, driving meaningful web services adoption. Nokia is pleased to have contributed to these standards and looks forward to their adoption by vendors, customers and other standards organizations, increasing the momentum toward practical service oriented architectures," said Frederick Hirsch, Senior Architect at Nokia, an active contributor in the OASIS WSS Technical Committee and member of the OASIS Board of Directors.

Reactivity "Over the past 18 months, Reactivity has been an active member of the OASIS WSS Technical Committee, providing thought leadership in XML security technology to help drive the convergence of interoperability standards. We appreciate the opportunity to contribute to Web Services Security Version 1.0 and are pleased to have been the first among XML security gateways to actually demonstrate broad interoperability. We will continue to actively support the final specification in our current and next-generation secure connectivity solutions for Web services," said John Lilly, CTO, Reactivity.

SAP "SAP considers message-level Web service security a key component for deploying Web services in enterprise-critical business applications. We are pleased to see Web Services Security accepted as an OASIS Open Standard and to announce its support in SAP NetWeaver, SAP’s application and integration platform. Web Services Security provides our customers with message integrity and confidentiality in their Web services-based application integration projects," said Michael Bechauf, Vice President NetWeaver Standards at SAP.

Sarvega "As the deployment of Web services, especially in mission-critical applications, becomes more widespread, the ability to provide interoperable, comprehensive and reliable security becomes all the more important. The industry has recognized for some time that standardization of security is key to successful Web services deployments. OASIS and its members have made significant contributions toward crafting a common standard and assuring real life applicability through interoperability testing. We, as well as our customers, are extremely pleased about this announcement and Sarvega is proud to be part of the process," said Girish Juneja, co-founder and senior vice president of product management for Sarvega.

SeeBeyond "Approval of Web Services Security as an OASIS Standard is an important step toward maturing the set of basic technologies necessary to support the deployment of secure Web Services. As an OASIS sponsor represented on the OASIS WSS Technical Committee, SeeBeyond supports this advancement in providing enhanced message-based integrity, confidentiality, and authentication. This security standard coupled with our open platform for composite application development and integration, further supports our role in enabling standards-based interoperability built on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for our global customer base," said Alex Andrianopoulos, vice president of Product Management & Standards for SeeBeyond.

About OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org):

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web services, conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 2,500 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries.

More information:

OASIS WSS Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wss

Cover Pages Technology Report: Web Services Security http://xml.coverpages.org/ws-security.html

Press contact:

Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS (www.oasis-open.org) carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

Boston, MA, USA; 13 April 2004 — Standards consortium, OASIS, has brought together government defense agencies, major manufacturers, and software vendors to collaborate on the deployment of an international data exchange standard to support complex engineered assets throughout their entire life cycle. The new OASIS Product Life Cycle Support (PLCS) Technical Committee will develop Data Exchange Sets (DEXs) that provide a mechanism to maintain information on complex systems such as ships, aircraft, engines, or oil platforms, supporting product changes from concept to disposal.

OASIS PLCS Technical Committee members will base their work on the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) 10303 Standard for Exchange of Product Model Data (STEP) Application Protocol 239 PLCS. OASIS will build on the ISO STEP XML binding to generate standardized XML schemas for PLCS DEXs.

Defense agencies across Europe and North America are actively participating in the OASIS development. Air Chief Marshal Sir Malcolm Pledger, UK Chief of Defence Logistics emphasized that the initiative had his personal support. Commodore Morten Jacobsen, Norwegian Head of Defence Investment, expressed his belief that PLCS will be the leading standard for product data and Life Cycle Management.

"PLCS will enable UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) to contract against an open, neutral and commercial ISO support data standard. We see PLCS as a keystone in the development of the MOD support transformation policy driving down equipment support costs," said Major-General Malcolm Wood, Director General Defence Supply Chain, United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (MOD).

Jerry Smith of the US Defense Information Systems Agency, co-chair of the OASIS PLCS Technical Committee explained, "One of the biggest challenges for owners and maintainers of complex, high value assets is keeping all of the information that describes the product and its associated support environment aligned with the actual product configuration as it changes throughout its operating life. The OASIS PLCS work answers the growing need for open standards that facilitate the next generation of integrated customer support solutions."

"The exciting thing about advancing this work within OASIS is the participation we have from customers and users as well as vendors," added Howard Mason of BAE Systems, co-chair of the OASIS PLCS Technical Committee. "This shared approach to a shared problem is fundamental to the common solutions that are needed to transform the logistics chain across both commercial and military domains."

OASIS PLCS Technical Committee members include The Boeing Company, LSC Group, Norwegian Defence Logistics Organisation, Swedish Defence Materiel Administration, UK Ministry of Defence, US Defense Information Systems Agency, and others. To ensure the entire community is represented in the OASIS development, liaisons have been established with ISO’s TC 184/SC4 on Industrial Data, the European Association of Aerospace Industries (AECMA), POSC Caesar, and Government Electronics & Information Technology Association (G-EIA). Participation remains open to all organizations and individuals, and OASIS hosts a mail list for public comment.

About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web services, conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 3,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information:

OASIS PLCS Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/plcs

Press contact:

Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

Boston, MA, USA; 12 April 2004 — International standards consortium, OASIS, announced plans to advance the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), a document creation and management specification that builds content reuse into the authoring process. The XML architecture defined by the new OASIS DITA Technical Committee will be used to design, write, manage, and publish technical documentation in print and on the Web.

"DITA embodies several interesting information architecture concepts related to XML-based authoring and content management, including a clever transclusion mechanism that supports document component reuse," said Robin Cover, editor of the Cover Pages, a reference site for markup languages. Cover has tracked the progress of DITA through several revisions and views the decision to bring the specification into an open collaborative forum as a very positive development. "Given the elusive Holy Grail of semantically constrained content reuse, DITA represents a unique contribution; the architecture deserves the attention of a wider group of reviewers and developers."

Focusing on the ‘topic’ as a conceptual unit of authoring, DITA will extend existing content markup to represent domains of specialized markup common across sets of topics, e.g., hardware vs. software. Larger documents can be created by aggregating topic units. Content referencing combines several topics into a single document or allows content to be shared among topics.

"With DITA, the distinction between reusable content and reusing content disappears," said Dave Schell, convener of the OASIS DITA Techncial Committee. "That’s because DITA’s strength lies in a unified content reuse mechanism that enables an element to replace itself with the content of a like element elsewhere, either in the current topic or in a separate topic that shares the same content models."

Don Day of IBM, proposed chair of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee, added, "DITA goes beyond standard entity reuse to allow reused content to exist in a valid XML file with a DTD. The net result is that reused content gets validated at authoring time, rather than at reuse time, catching problems at their source."

By enabling definitive semantics, DITA will allow more automatable processes, consistent authoring and better retrievability and applicability to specific industries. Through the use of a common specification, DITA content owners will benefit from industry support, interoperability, and reuse of community contributions. At the same time, through specialization, content owners will be able to address the specific requirements of their business or industry.

OASIS DITA Technical Committee members include representatives of Arbortext, Innodata Isogen, IBM, and others. The group brings together XML tools vendors, consultants on Information Architectures and Content Management Systems (CMS), and users of the DITA Document Type Definitions (DTD) and Schemas. Participation remains open to all organizations and individuals; OASIS will host a mail list for public comment.

Industry Support for DITA

Arbortext "DITA presents an innovative solution to several thorny problems of developing XML applications, especially in the publishing arena, and we at Arbortext enthusiastically support the new OASIS DITA Technical Committee," said Paul Grosso, VP Research for Arbortext.

IBM "DITA establishes a platform for information development that lays the foundation for content collaboration. DITA is an XML-based architecture with a modular design and built-in extension mechanisms that usher in a new era of collaboration for the design, reuse, and processing of content," said Dave A. Schell, chief strategist for IBM’s information development community, commenting on IBM’s recent donation of DITA to OASIS and the formation of an OASIS Technical Committee for DITA.

Innodata Isogen "Innodata Isogen finds that the DITA architecture fits very well with the technical approaches we’ve used for many years in addressing our clients’ requirements for managing complex systems of modular information. We see DITA-based solutions as a key component of robust, large-scale XML-based information management systems – especially in global enterprises or vertical industries where interoperability and re-use among different groups is a requirement," said Eliot Kimber, Senior Systems Analyst, Innodata Isogen.

About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web services, conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 2,500 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information:

OASIS DITA Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita

Cover Pages Technology Report: http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2004-03-29-b.html

Press contact: Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

Boston, MA, USA; 8 April 2004 — OASIS, the international standards consortium, announced plans to host the Symposium on Reliable Infrastructures for XML, 26-27 April 2004, in New Orleans. The event, which will be open to the public, will offer a forum for the international community to exchange ideas and present results of standards work-in-progress. Attendees will identify unaddressed topics in need of standards development and areas where coordination between efforts would promote interoperability.

"Today, many different (and partially interchangeable) technologies are available that propose to increase the reliability of XML-based messaging and networking infrastructure. We define ‘reliable’ to mean that implementing one or more of these technologies in an infrastructure removes some of the burden of ensuring application integrity from software programmers and architects," explained Chet Ensign of LexisNexis, chair of the Program Committee of the OASIS Technical Advisory Board. "The OASIS Symposium will focus on exploring the current state of these technologies and identifying gaps where open standards are needed."

User requirements will drive the discussions. Keynotes will be provided by William Stangel, Sr. VP and Enterprise Architect for Fidelity Investments Systems Company, and Thomas Koulopoulos, president and co-founder of the Delphi Group.

Other program highlights include a user panel on "Implementing Standards to Achieve Reliable Transacting," featuring Fred Falten of General Motors representing the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG), Kenneth R. Hutcheson, director of the Chemical Industry Data Exchange (CIDX), Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS, and Paul Tearnen, Vice President, Standards Management of RosettaNet. Moderated by Michael Bechauf, Vice President of NetWeaver Standards for SAP, the panel will explore the importance of open standards to users and the ways industry groups are implementing standard-oriented architectures into their own work.

Building on foundational information presented in the main Symposium, the healthcare community will gather on Wednesday, 28 April for a workshop, "Reliable Infrastructures for eHealth." Implementers from Health Level Seven (HL7), The Mayo Clinic, Medical Banking Project, US Centre for Disease Control, US National Institute of Health, and others will investigate the relationships between the standards that exist today and paths for future development.

Seventeen OASIS Technical Committees will meet following the Symposium to advance standard data exchange for e-business, Web services, security, and legal applications. First meetings of the new OASIS Electronic Business Service Oriented Architecture (ebSOA) Technical Committee, the OASIS Web Services Notification (WSN) Technical Committee, and the OASIS Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) Technical Committee will be held at the event.

The OASIS Symposium is sponsored by Adobe, Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM, SAP, and Sun Microsystems. Registration is open to all. For more information: http://www.oasis-open.org/events/symposium/

About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web services, conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 3,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. http://www.oasis-open.org

Press contact:

Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

Boston, MA, USA; 7 April 2004 — Members of the international standards consortium, OASIS, announced plans to advance an electronic business architecture that builds on ebXML and other Web services technology. The new OASIS Electronic Business Service Oriented Architecture (ebSOA) Technical Committee will use ebXML Technical Architecture v1.04 as a starting point for describing a service-oriented architecture and practical implementation techniques that take into account the ebXML OASIS Standards (recently approved as ISO 15000), as well as recent developments from other OASIS technical committees and standards bodies.

"When the ebXML architecture was first conceived, the term ‘web services’ hadn’t even been coined," recalled Charles Abrams, research director at Gartner. "Now, many of the ebXML layers have been reconciled to embrace core World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) technology, such as WSDL and SOAP. OASIS and its member organizations will build momentum for ebXML by articulating how the standards fit into the emerging service-oriented architectures that users need to stay competitive in their IT efforts."

Duane Nickull of Adobe Systems, convener and proposed chair of the OASIS ebSOA Technical Committee, explained, "A modern service-oriented architecture is core to enabling enterprises to efficiently integrate and distribute business processes across multiple systems with reliability and security. The OASIS ebSOA Technical Committee will explore how various ebXML and web service components work together as a cohesive system. This work is essential to every enterprise."

"The adopter’s picture of a ‘complete’ set of modular services is far more expansive and addresses greater functionalities than were contemplated in the original ebXML architecture," added Karl Best, vice president of OASIS. "Participants in this new OASIS Technical Committee intend to map this broader area and provide examples and best practices that will make the implementer’s job a lot easier."

Members of the OASIS ebSOA Technical Committee include Adobe Systems, The Boeing Company, Booz Allen Hamilton, Commerce One, Cyclone Commerce, and others. The group will hold its first meeting on 29 April 2004, following the OASIS Symposium on Reliable Infrastructures in New Orleans. Committee participation remains open to all organizations and individuals. OASIS will also host a mail list for public comment on ebSOA.

"Service oriented architectures are playing an increasingly important role in allowing government agencies and private companies to respond more quickly to changing business needs," said Joseph Chiusano, senior consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton. "We believe that exposing application functionality to other systems as services through a component based approach–with ‘commoditized’ parts–will lead to more flexible business operating environments for our clients."

About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web services, conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 3,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information:

OASIS ebSOA Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ebsoa

ebXML http://www.ebxml.org

ebXML Adoption Update http://www.ebxml.org/documents/ebxml_adopt_update_122203.pdf

Cover Pages http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2004-02-20-a.html

Press contact:

Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

San Francisco, CA, USA; 31 March 2004–Seven vendors collaborated to showcase interoperability of the recently approved OASIS Standard, Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP), at today’s Delphi Group Enterprise On-Demand Summit. Members of the OASIS WSRP Technical Committee demonstrated the use of WSRP to enable user-driven integration, by aggregating content from various sources and across multiple platforms. Together, they showed how portlets can be reused on portals via WSRP rather than requiring each portal to separately install a complete set of portlets. WSRP maximizes both control and availability for the portlet hosting site while minimizing costs for the remote portal sites.

"With WSRP, users browse through libraries of content and information resources, bringing them into portals and other applications through ‘plug-and-play’ integration," explained Nathaniel Palmer, analyst for the Delphi Group. "The WSRP OASIS Standard offers the opportunity to greatly reduce the cost of integration, without jeopardizing the integrity of information and content repositories."

In the OASIS WSRP Interop Demo, content from portlets running on five different platforms, including .NET, was aggregated and interacted with in a manner equal to that of locally hosted portlets. BEA, IBM, Oracle, and Plumtree provided test implementations of a WSRP Consumer within their portal servers.

"Without WSRP, this would require manual coding of integration points between portal vendors," noted Rich Thompson of IBM, chair of the OASIS WSRP Technical Committee. "With WSRP, portlet repositories continue to be maintained by the appropriate administrators, but the resources they provide are accessible to non-technical business users."

Industry Support for WSRP

"As an open source company, Gluecode is committed to open standards, and building enterprise-ready products built upon these standards," said Winston Damarillo, CEO of Gluecode. "The WSRP OASIS Standard allows enterprises to maximize the value of their portal deployments without being locked into any one platform. We are pleased to be contributing our expertise in portal and open source technologies to these standardization efforts."

"As a co-author and a leader of the WSRP and JSR 168 initiatives, IBM is very glad to see that WSRP interoperability between different vendors’ products has become a reality," said Tim Thatcher, Program Director of portal and workplace products for IBM. "Through WebSphere Portal, IBM will enable companies to integrate and publish portlets offered by WSRP compliant producers as WSRP services. Additionally, to drive adoption of the WSRP OASIS Standard, IBM is providing a free open source implementation of WSRP based on Tomcat to the Apache Software Foundation as well as an interoperability test suite available at IBM alphaworks."

"It’s great to see so many vendors demonstrating WSRP interoperability. We’re looking forward to the next round of standards that add services like crawlers, search, and profiling–services that, when combined with standard portlets, can be used to build service-oriented applications," said Glenn Kelman, vice president of marketing and product management for Plumtree. "We’ve made a commitment to Radical Openness, a strategy dedicated to ensuring our software works with the widest range of platforms and tools in the industry. In addition to demonstrating our WSRP portlets at today’s conference, we will teach developers to build applications using WSRP and other Web Services at our upcoming Advanced Developer Conference."

"Sun is delighted by the enthusiastic response around our support for the WSRP OASIS Standard in the latest version of Sun Java System Portal Server by both our customers and partners," said David Bryant, director of portal services at Sun Microsystems. "With the WSRP OASIS Standard, the integration of disparate applications and content in portals can be achieved in a tiny fraction of the time and cost usually associated with this type of deployment. Sun continues to participate in the development of the WSRP OASIS Standard, and we look forward to the ongoing benefits this standard brings to business and IT."

"Vignette is seeing increasing customer demand for the plug-and-play benefits that the WSRP OASIS Standard provides," said Ed Anuff, vice president of portal and collaboration solutions at Vignette Corporation. "As a member of the OASIS WSRP Technical Committee and a long-time leading proponent of open architecture and industry standards adherence, Vignette applauds the surge of interest in WSRP-compliant offerings. The real winners in sustained WSRP adoption are the organizations worldwide that can decrease cost of ownership and training on portal initiatives thanks to the standard’s inherent interoperability."

About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web services, conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 3,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information:

OASIS WSRP Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsrp

Press contact:

Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

Geneva, Switzerland and Boston, MA, USA; 29 March 2004 — The International Standards Organization (IS0) has approved a suite of four ebXML OASIS Standards that enable enterprises in any industry, of any size, anywhere in the world to conduct business over the Internet. The submissions from OASIS will be published as ISO technical specifications, ISO/TS 15000.

The new ISO 15000 designation, under the general title, Electronic business eXtensible markup language, includes four parts, each corresponding to one of ebXML’s modular suite of standards:

ISO 15000-1: ebXML Collaborative Partner Profile Agreement
ISO 15000-2: ebXML Messaging Service Specification
ISO 15000-3: ebXML Registry Information Model
ISO 15000-4: ebXML Registry Services Specification

Until now, the technology available for most businesses to exchange data was electronic data interchange (EDI), which made significant contributions to productivity and inventory control. Many companies, however, find EDI expensive and difficult to implement. The ebXML initiative, using the economies of scale presented by the Internet, breaks through these obstacles.

ebXML provides companies with a standard method to exchange business messages, conduct trading relationships, communicate data in common terms and define and register business processes. It aims to make it easier for organizations to interface with others within and outside their industry, open up new markets with less effort than before and, at the same time, cut costs and simplify process associated with traditional document exchange.

"ISO/TS 15000 underscores the importance of partnership between ISO and standards-developing organizations as OASIS to craft a common set of standards and reflects the international community’s recognition of the importance of ebXML in enabling electronic business," said Alan Bryden, ISO Secretary-General. "We applaud the developers of ebXML within OASIS and the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) for their contributions to open trade data interchange and harmonization."

"ISO approval is a gratifying endorsement of both ebXML and the OASIS open standards process," noted Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "ISO designation makes the already widely adopted ebXML standards even more accessible to adopters–particularly those implementing business solutions for governments–who look to ISO for assurance of long term viability."

John Borras, Director Technology Policy, U.K. Office of the e-Envoy, characterized the ISO approval as "a milestone for domestic and international electronic trade. Government agencies, users, and trade organizations can specify ebXML compliance with even greater confidence."

ISO/TS 15000 was approved by ISO technical committee ISO/TC 154, Processes, data elements and documents in commerce, industry and administration. For more information see http://www.iso.org/tc154. OASIS technical committees retain responsibility for maintaining and advancing ebXML standards. Details on ebXML installations are provided in the "ebXML Adoption Update" at http://www.ebxml.org/documents/ebxml_adopt_update_122203.pdf.

About ISO ISO is made up of 148 national standards institutes from countries large and small, industrialized and developing, in all regions of the world. ISO develops voluntary technical standards which contribute to making industrial production and supply more efficient, safer and cleaner, and to making trade between countries easier and fairer. ISO standards also serve to safeguard consumers and users in general of products and services, as well as to make their lives simpler.

About OASIS OASIS is the not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide standards for Web services, security, conformance, business transactions, and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 3,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries.

For more information: http://www.oasis-open.org http://www.ebxml.org http://www.iso.org/tc154

Press contact: Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

Boston, MA, USA; 17 March 2004 — Members of the international standards consortium, OASIS, announced plans to define a generic, open framework for modeling and accessing stateful resources using Web services. The OASIS Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) Technical Committee will define a set of royalty-free, interoperable, and modular specifications that will allow the relationship between a Web service and its state to be modeled in an explicit, standard fashion.

"Web services implementations are usually stateless–the lifetime of a dynamic state does not exceed the processing of an individual message. Web service interfaces, on the other hand, often imply some form of stateful interaction with the clients of the service," explained David Snelling of Fujitsu, convener and proposed co-chair of the OASIS WSRF Technical Committee. "WSRF, which will formalize this implied resource pattern, will include mechanisms to describe views on state, to support its management through associated properties, and to describe how these mechanisms are extensible to groups of Web services."

"Our work will create a framework within which Web services can access state in a consistent and interoperable manner," added Ian Robinson of IBM, proposed co-chair of the OASIS WSRF Technical Committee. "WSRF will simplify the definition of new service interfaces and enable more powerful discovery, management and development tools."

Authors of WS-Resource–a set of documents recently published by Computer Associates, Fujitsu, the Globus Alliance, HP, and IBM–plan to submit their work to the OASIS WSRF Technical Committee at its first meeting, with the same intent as the parallel submission of WS-Notification. Other contributions conforming to the charter of the Technical Committee (if any) will be evaluated upon submission.

The OASIS WSRF Technical Committee will coordinate efforts with the OASIS Web Services Notification (WSN) Technical Committee (also announced today). Members of the OASIS WSN Technical Committee plan to conform their work to the implied resource pattern specified by WSRF and will make use of WSRF specifications concerning lifetime and properties.

According to officials of the Global Grid Forum (GGF), WSRF and WSN have the potential to more closely connect the Grid and Web services communities. Both OASIS technical committees look forward to active participation from GGF. "As GGF moves forward with the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA), we are enthusiastic about the opportunity to leverage our efforts with OASIS and explore the synergies between WSN, WSRF, and OGSA," noted Charlie Catlett, GGF Chair and Senior Fellow at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory.

Industry Support for WSRF

"In order to build solutions that enable organizations to realize the full value of Web services, the industry requires a simplified means of modeling stateful resources. We are glad to be contributing our Web services management expertise to these efforts, as we see the WSRF specification as vital to the development of these enabling technologies," said Fred Carter, AmberPoint’s chief architect.

"The OASIS WSRF–in conjunction with the other Web services security and management standards supported and contributed by CA–will facilitate realization of robust, secure and scalable services-oriented architectures based on Web services and Grid Computing principles. CA will continue to work closely with OASIS and other industry leaders to ensure the ability of CA customers to build high-value, manageable business applications using state-of-the-art technologies," said Dmitri Tcherevik, director of Web services at Computer Associates.

"Fujitsu is pleased to contribute to WSRF standardization by offering the services of Dr. David Snelling of Fujitsu as a co-chair of this OASIS TC. The standardization of Royalty Free and freely available specifications, such as WSRF and WSN, is critical to the use of Grid technologies in a broad commercial market. We believe that this commercial market demands that implementations of these specifications can proceed without infringing proprietary technologies, while making sure that these specifications remain under the control of an open standard body for their future evolution. We hope our contribution to the OASIS WSRF Technical Committee helps to accomplish this. We believe OASIS is the ideal venue for the standardization of the WSRF technologies," said Seigo Hirosue, General Manager of Strategy and Technology Division, Software Group of Fujitsu Limited.

"webMethods’ work with the OASIS WSRF Technical Committee is indicative of the company’s ongoing support of Web services standards. The creation and management of stateful resources are a critical component to creating sophisticated applications with an Enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture. As a provider of these infrastructures for many years, webMethods is excited about the opportunity to help shape the standardization of these important capabilities," said Marc Breissinger, vice president and chief architect, webMethods, Inc.

About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web services, conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 3,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information:

OASIS WSRF Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsrf

OASIS WSN Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsn

Cover Pages: Stateful Web Services http://xml.coverpages.org/statefulWebServices.html

Press contact:

Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

Boston, MA, USA; 17 March 2004 — Members of the international standards consortium, OASIS, announced plans to standardize the way Web services interact using the Notification pattern. The OASIS Web Services Notification (WSN) Technical Committee will advance a pattern-based approach that will allow one Web service to disseminate information to a set of other Web services, without prior knowledge of those services.

"The Notification pattern has many applications in the arenas of system or device management or in commercial domains such as electronic trading," explained Peter Niblett of IBM, convener and proposed co-chair of the OASIS WSN Technical Committee. "Our goal is to define a set of royalty-free, interoperable and modular specifications that allow this pattern to be modeled in an explicit and standardized fashion."

The OASIS WSN Technical Committee will coordinate efforts with the OASIS Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) Technical Committee (also announced today). Members of the OASIS WSN Technical Committee plan to conform their work to the implied resource pattern specified by WSRF and will make use of WSRF specifications concerning lifetime and properties.

"The potential benefits common standard foundations such as WSRF and WSN present enterprise customers are considerable," said William Vambenepe of HP, proposed co-chair of the OASIS WSN Technical Committee, "Both can be applied to many domains, including management, smart devices and grid computing, ultimately helping enterprises better manage and optimize use of their existing resources."

Authors of WS-Notification–a set of documents recently published by Akamai Technologies, Computer Associates International, Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe, the Globus Alliance/Argonne National Laboratory, HP, IBM, SAP AG, Sonic Software, and Tibco Software–plan to submit their work to the OASIS WSN Technical Committee at its first meeting. Other contributions conforming to the charter of the Technical Committee (if any) will be evaluated upon submission.

In submitting WS-Notification and WS-Resource to OASIS, the authors express their support for the creation of open, stable, interoperable systems, and believe this is best achieved by the creation of standards for both new and component technologies of WSN and WSRF within organizations such as OASIS. The level of interoperability that results from an accepted standard, sanctioned through an open, trusted process with the support of the vendor and end user communities, is key to widespread adoption of WSN and WSRF.

Industry Support for WSN

"Notifications play a central role in modern management systems. A standardized mechanism for delivering notifications should help greatly in our goal of interoperability between various types of management systems. We are pleased to be able to contribute our experience in Web services management to these standards efforts," said Paul Butterworth, AmberPoint CTO.

"OASIS WSN will work synergistically with other standards supported and contributed by CA to enable on-demand dissemination of information across digital infrastructures, using widely-accepted Web services and Grid computing principles. CA will continue to work closely with other industry leaders and with OASIS to develop and implement standards that empower companies to build, manage and secure highly adaptable technology solutions that improve business performance, enable more tightly bonded customer relationships and create new revenue streams," said Dmitri Tcherevik, director of Web services at Computer Associates.

"With this standard, OASIS for the first time brings open standardization to the previously proprietary world of pub-sub systems that are so important in financial services and the intelligence community. DataPower’s XML-aware network routers will support this specification to help drive broad adoption of event-driven computing beyond its current niche," said Eugene Kuznetsov, chairman and CTO at DataPower.

"Fujitsu is pleased to contribute to WSN standardization by offering the services of our staff as a members of this OASIS Technical Committee. The standardization of Royalty Free and freely available specifications, such as WSN and WSRF, is critical to the use of Grid technologies in a broad commercial market. We believe that this commercial market demands that implementations of these specifications can proceed without infringing proprietary technologies, while making sure that these specifications remain under the control of an open standard body for their future evolution. The activities in this Technical Committee should be harmonized with the other OASIS activities, and we hope our contribution to the OASIS WSN Technical Committee helps to accomplish this. We believe OASIS is the ideal venue for the standardization of the WSN technologies," said Seigo Hirosue, General Manager of Strategy and Technology Division, Software Group of Fujitsu Limited.

"As our customers continue to implement increasingly complex Web services projects, the need for standards that address important infrastructure components and frameworks such as WSN and WSRF become increasingly critical. We are pleased to support OASIS in this important effort by participating in these technical committees. These efforts underscore Novell’s commitment to promoting interoperability based on open, royalty-free industry standards," said David Litwack, senior vice president for Novell’s exteNd and Nsure product lines.

"The ability to manage Web services and their underlying resources is critical to a comprehensive security strategy. The adoption of standards in Web services security will further increase the need for Web services management standards such as WSDM, WSRF, and WSN," said Bob Worner, VP of engineering at OpenNetwork.

"WS-Notification provides a general-purpose publish-subscribe mechanism that fills a common gap in Web services applications. It will be applicable to many domains ranging from systems management and business process management to sophisticated supply chain management applications. WS-Notification provides a scaleable architecture suitable for large-scale systems due to provision of brokered notifications. As one of the WS-Notification authors, SAP will play an active role in the OASIS WSN Technical Committee to make sure that the new standard will meet our customers’ requirements in heterogeneous and large-scale business applications," said Michael Bechauf, Vice President NetWeaver Standards at SAP.

"webMethods is advancing the work of the OASIS WSN Technical Committee because of the importance that emerging standards have in helping companies create and manage robust Service-Oriented Architectures. We have long been a leader in publish and subscribe messaging and believe that WSN offers a way for us to carry forward those capabilities into the world of Web services," said Marc Breissinger, vice president and chief architect, webMethods, Inc.

About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web services, conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 3,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information:

OASIS WSN Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsn

OASIS WSRF Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsrf

Cover Pages: Stateful Web Services http://xml.coverpages.org/statefulWebServices.html

Press contact:

Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209

San Francisco, CA, USA; 2004 RSA Conference; 25 February 2004 — Eleven vendors teamed with the U.S. General Service Administration (GSA) E-Gov E-Authentication Initiative to demonstrate interoperability of the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), an OASIS Standard for the exchange of authentication and authorization information. For the first time ever, members of the OASIS Security Services Technical Committee demonstrated both types of SAML version 1.1 Single Sign-On, along with additional scenarios that highlight SAML’s flexibility.

The OASIS SAML Interoperability Lab, sponsored by GSA, hosted by RSA Security, and co-sponsored by Sun Microsystems, used three separate scenarios to simulate interaction between a government or enterprise portal and sites from typical content or service providers.

The GSA E-Authentication Initiative is committed to delivering open standards-based authentication solutions to U.S. government agencies. Currently, E-Authentication is working with products that are interoperable using the SAML 1.0 protocol. According to Steve Timchak, E-Authentication Program Manager, "Interoperability among products is a key to the federated approach adopted by the E-Authentication Initiative. Additional protocols will emerge and become viable standards in the E-Authentication environment as federated authentication evolves. Sponsoring the SAML 1.1 Interoperability Lab is part of E-Authentication’s commitment to this evolution."

"We have validated SAML’s strong traction in the marketplace in several reports this year and in work with our client base, estimating it is in use at between 100 and 200 organizations worldwide," said Dan Blum, Senior Vice President and Research Director, Burton Group. "SAML is a proven standard offering implementers opportunities for productivity gains, cost savings, risk transference, or competitive advantage. Additional work on nailing down interoperability will enhance SAML’s value to customers, and we are pleased to see 11 vendors participate in the RSA Conference interoperability event."

"SAML 1.1 succeeds in establishing a basis for federated identity, an environment where attention to interoperability is imperative," said Robert Philpott of RSA Security, co-chair of the OASIS Security Services Technical Committee. Philpott, together with fellow co-chair, Prateek Mishra of Netegrity, pointed to SAML adoption by Liberty Alliance, the Internet2/MACE Shibboleth project, and OASIS WS-Security, as signs of widespread implementation in the industry.

Vendors Collaborate on SAML Interoperability

Computer Associates "As organizations continue to move more business transactions online, the importance of the SAML standard grows exponentially. Computer Associates embraces open standards, and we are fully committed to delivering security management solutions built upon these standards to empower secure federated identity management. New standards such as SAML, Liberty, and SPML allow organizations to securely provision, validate, and pass identity and authorization information, thereby reducing end-user management costs while enhancing the support and deployment of Web services," said Gavenraj Sodhi, product manager for eTrust Security Management solutions at CA.

Entrust "Our participation in the OASIS SAML Interoperability Lab showcases our ongoing commitment to the advancement of open standards as well as our support for the US Federal Government E-Authentication initiative," said Chris Voice, vice-president, Secure Identity Management Solutions, Entrust, Inc. "SAML interoperability is key to enabling business and government to extend application architectures and leverage the efficiencies of broad single sign-on in a federated environment."

Oblix "Oblix is completely dedicated to interoperability between systems," said Prakash Ramamurthy, vice president of products & technology, Oblix. "Oblix has both endorsed and invested in open standards such as SPML and SAML, and drove the industry’s first and most robust deployment using the SAML specification. Customers benefit the most from products that adhere to open standards, and we support that model as the only cost-effective way to connect people, resources and systems."

OpenNetwork "This event validates the value of industry standards such as SAML and their importance to achieving better interoperability among disparate platforms and across company borders. We’re able to show with more clarity than ever before how an enterprise can extend its reach safely, quickly and cost-effectively without having to abandon its existing infrastructure investments," said Bob Worner, vice president of engineering at OpenNetwork.

RSA Security "The new business opportunities and cost savings that SAML enables are driving its rapid acceptance as a standard among software vendors and enterprise customers," said Jason Lewis, vice president of product management and marketing at RSA Security. "Having contributed technology to the initial SAML effort and being one of the first to offer a solution that supports the current version, SAML 1.1, RSA Security is pleased to be a part of the value that it is creating."

About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web services, conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 2,500 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. http://www.oasis-open.org

Additional information:

OASIS Security Services Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/security

GSA eAuthentication Program http://cio.gov/eauthentication

Press contact: Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209