Sun-Microsoft agreement breeds anticipation of integration
Published: 11 May 2004 15:15 BST
"We can do a lot of that now," he said, "but having an agreement to [go] after some of the more esoteric parts of Kerberos authentication, for example, would help."
Directory compatibility is at the top of IT administrators' wish lists. Sun servers use the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) standard, while Windows relies on Microsoft's proprietary Active Directory protocols. Allowing Sun to poke around with Active Directory should lower the technical hurdles to signing on users between Sun and Microsoft systems, said Brian Conlon, chief information officer for global law firm Howrey Simon Arnold & White.
"I'm pleased at where they're focusing their initial efforts, on identity management and the authentication and single-sign-on issue," Conlon said. "If we can have a single facility or service for access control on customer-facing services and portals, that would save some trouble."
Tony Scott, chief information officer for General Motors' information systems and services division, agreed that better directory interoperability will have immediate payoffs.
"We have Microsoft everywhere on the desktop, and Sun LDAP directory (on Unix systems), so we have Active Directory and Sun LDAP integration work between the two that we have to do on a one-off, case-by-case basis," he said. "This is a perfect case where they can do that work for us and make that just plug in and work. We'll be delighted if they can pull that off. We would rather spend the money on manufacturing or designing a new car."
Web services in the wings
A little further into the future, Web services is likely to be a focus of Sun-Microsoft cooperation. Microsoft will continue to promote its .Net software for creating Web-based applications. And Sun will keep pushing its Java language, which is incompatible with Microsoft's .Net.
But, Fowler said, the formats can be made to work together better, building on work being done by the Web Services Interoperability Group.
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