Liberty Alliance Readies Demos

The Liberty Alliance trade group has announced several new members, including Oracle and Sharp Laboratories, and is preparing technology demonstrations of its single-logon technology.

The three-year-old organization now boasts more than 150 members, with some of the technology industry's top vendors signing on for full participation in recent months. Among the noted newcomers are Intel and Computer Associates.

"The momentum shows that the industry is recognizing the contribution we're making," says Simon Nicholson, who chairs the Liberty Alliance's business and marketing group.

The Liberty Alliance develops and promotes open specifications for managing user identities on networks. The group's goal is to enable secure interoperability across heterogeneous systems. This way, a single account would be usable at multiple e-commerce sites, so shoppers wouldn't have to log on separately and re-enter information at each digital storefront.

Products Emerge

Several companies now release commercial products compliant with the group's framework, though participating service providers are still in the early phases of their deployment plans. To illustrate its progress, the Liberty Alliance is organizing several member demonstrations later this week at the Burton Group's Catalyst conference in San Diego.

Participant Vodafone Group plans to show off a service allowing users to log on to Vodafone's portal Web site, find a photo-printing service, and arrange for photos to be printed and shipped. Based on a user's privacy settings, the service will hand various pieces of information to the selected third-party printing company.

That service is one of several Vodafone expects to go live next year, when it rolls out a new set of Web services across its product lines, according to Vodafone senior strategy manager James Vanderbeek.