Ping Identity and IBM Simplify Identity Federation for Business Partner Networks

Business Wire, Oct 26, 2004

DENVER -- Ping Identity today announced that its federation technology can now interoperate with IBM's Tivoli identity management software, helping enterprises and service providers securely link and exchange identity information across partner, supplier and customer organizations.

Ping Identity's open source toolkits (SourceID) and commercial federation gateway servers (PingFederate) now interoperate with IBM's federated identity software enabling partners and smaller businesses to participate in federation initiatives with larger corporations and governments.

Federated identity takes an open standards-based approach that can help reduce the cost overruns, security loopholes, and user inconvenience caused by proprietary, "silo-ed" application architectures. By enabling portability of identities across security domains, businesses are able to better reduce transactional friction, lower costs associated with single sign-on, and open up new possibilities for revenue generation.

IBM's integrated identity management software provides end-to-end user life cycle management for enterprise and federated deployments. IBM's identity management software, when combined with Ping Identity's open source federation toolkits and commercial federation servers, helps fill a gap in the federation marketplace, accelerating federated identity deployments between companies and their business partners.

For example, a medical insurance company might choose IBM Tivoli software to create a federated network that agencies could tie into for medical claims. Smaller associate agencies could deploy Ping Identity's product to exchange identity data securely over the network with the medical insurance company, using the identity standard best suited for their needs.

IBM and Ping Identity plan to accommodate multiple open standards (SAML, Liberty Alliance and WS-Federation). In addition, the interoperable technology will support federations with support for inter-company-use cases, such as new user provisioning, single sign-on, identity federation and identity attribute exchange.

"Taking existing identity management to trusted business partners is smart business," said Venkat Raghavan, manager of security products, Tivoli Software, IBM. "IBM is working with Ping Identity to solve core business issues, such as compliance and security, using innovative federated identity technology."

"As a company singularly focused on identity federation, we're intent on providing our customers with technology which integrates with existing systems," said Andre Durand, CEO of Ping Identity. "As such, we are honored to establish this product and working relationship with IBM Tivoli's market-leading identity management solutions. Working with IBM, we believe we can further develop the value realized by investments in identity federation."

About Ping Identity Corporation

Ping Identity Corporation (www.pingidentity.com) develops enterprise-class software and services for simplified and scalable identity federation. Ping's products focus exclusively on open standards (SAML, Liberty, WS-Federation). In addition to Ping's commercial multi-protocol federation servers and accelerated deployment services, Ping is also the proud sponsor of the leading open source project for identity federation -- SourceID (www.sourceid.org).