Well, my friends, it is time for me to say goodbye. It’s been a wonderful 5 years at Sun. As many probably suspected, I will not be joining the Oracle Identity team.

These past five years have been the best professional experiences in my life. I had a blast working with the Java Enterprise System team and Sun’s systems management team, but nothing beats my experience working with the most talented Identity Management team in the world. Oracle is inheriting THE BEST Identity products available and I wish them luck on their strategy and direction.

Although I’m very happy that this process has finally come to a close, I am sad to see Sun fading away. I believe the environment that Sun fostered was a once in a lifetime opportunity and I appreciate the experience and have tremendous gratitude for all that it offered me.

Since I host my own blog now, I will continue to blog here about everything identity. Also, If you want to keep in touch, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

I’m happy to announce that Sun Role Manager 5 and Sun Directory Server Enterprise Edition 7 are now shipping!
Sun Role Manager 5.0 is the latest release of Sun’s Enterprise Role Management and Access Governance solution. In this release, Sun is extending it’s leadership in the market by driving innovation that will allow companies to move beyond answering the simple question of “who has access to what?,” and make available the information necessary to intelligently govern the definition, assignment, and enforcement of access within an organization.
Sun Directory Server Enterprise Edition 7.0 allows companies to grow faster and easier. The new release focuses on two key areas – improving performance and lowering total cost of ownership. This release boasts a 3x performance improvement over the previous version of the product. In addition, this release provides hardware optimization with up to 60% improvement in authentications and modifications. This allows customers to accelerate their applications without changing a line of code.
If you would like a recap of what’s new, check out our press release and updated Role Manager and Directory Server EE product pages below.
1) Read Sun Role Manager 5 / Directory Server 7 Press Release
2) Visit the Sun Role Manager Product Page
3) Visit the Sun Directory Server Enterprise Edition Product Page
Also, you can watch a recap of our launch webinar by just clicking on the video below.

Below is a great webcast put on by Nick Wooler and Neil Gandhi from the Sun Identity team. They discuss all the great new things in Role Manager 5 and Directory Server Enterprise Edition 7. I’m always struck by the hypnotic power of Wooler’s voice. I’m convinced he has a bright future in Books-on-Tape. Check it out!

Theeeeeeeey’re heeeeeeeeere . . .

Nice video by resident slacker / sales engineer Paul Walker on how the Sun Identity Management suite can complement Sun’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). The demo shows how Sun can provide the whole stack from the operating system, smartcards, SunRay thin client device, desktop delivery mechanism and Identity Management (IdM) to offer a complete and secure VDI solution. The products used in this demo include the following (in no particular order) . . .
* Sun OpenSSO Enteprise
* Sun Identity Manager
* Sun Directory Server Enterprise Edition
* SunRay Server
* Sun Secure Global Desktop
* Sun VirtualBox
* Sun VDI
* OpenSolaris 2008.11