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.

Wow. It’s finally here. I know it’s a good thing that this is closing, but can’t help but feel sad. Despite all of its problems, I don’t think we will ever see an amazing company like Sun again. A few more days to “assimilation.”

The European Commission has approved under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of US hardware and software vendor Sun Microsystems Inc. by Oracle Corporation, a US enterprise software company. After an in-depth examination, launched in September 2009 (see IP/09/1271 ), the Commission concluded that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or any substantial part of it.

Read Press Release

Nice little customer success story for Identity Manager. Enjoy!

Italy’s University of Verona provides wide-ranging educational opportunities including undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral degrees and coursework, as well as specialty training and doctoral research. The university’s eight primary areas of study are economics, law, humanities, languages and literature, medicine, sports science, education science, and mathematical, physical, and natural sciences. The institution conducts intensive scientific research in each of these areas.
Read More.

Register for this free Webinar to learn more about the latest identity administration advancements for Identity Manager and Role Manager, including:

* One-click enablement of compliant provisioning
* Integrated role assignment
* Preventative, real-time segregation of duties (SoD) policy enforcement

Topic: Sun Webcast Series – Identity Manager and Role Manager Product Update
Date: Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Time: 10:00 am PT / 1:00 pm ET / 19.00 CET (check my timezone)
Duration: 1 hour
Speaker: Sun Product Manager Mat Hamlin

On the customer front — Express Scripts has deployed Sun’s Identity Management Portfolio to implement a centralized identity management solution that automates provisioning for more than 100 systems based on an employee’s job function or operational role. The solution has created a centralized identity directory that maps multiple corporate identities on disparate systems that are each associated with a single employee.

Here’s a link to the customer success story

You can also read more identity customer success stories here.

Last week I had the opportunity to record an IDM Buzz Podcast with Michael Cote of Redmonk and Jamie Nelson, Sun’s Director of Engineering for OpenSSO.
In this episode we discuss the latest OpenSSO Express 9 launch and our new Fine-Grained Authorization (FGA) capabilities. We also explain why we chose a Resource Oriented Architecture when designing our FGA solution and did some therapy with Cote to help him deal with his exposure to a shaved, punk rock cat (we’re hoping his health care covers the session).
Listen Now
Also, if you missed our webinar last week on the OpenSSO Fine-Grained Authorization capabilities check out the replay here. Enjoy!

For those that missed it, below is the webinar we recorded yesterday on OpenSSO’s new Fine-Grained Entitlement Enforcement capabilities. Enjoy! You can also read the press release here.

There’s a couple of nice technical articles available that demonstrate how to integrate EJBCA and OpenSSO. EJBCA is an enterprise class PKI Certificate Authority built on J2EE technology. It is a robust, high performance, platform independent, flexible, and component based CA to be used stand-alone or integrated in other J2EE applications. EJBCA provides users with digital certificates for strong authentication and digital signatures. OpenSSO uses these credentials to provide single sign-on and authorization. Check out the articles.
Using OpenSSO To Protect Java EE Applications: Setting Up X.509 Client Authentication
Integrating EJBCA and OpenSSO (pdf)

As we near the end of the year, Kuppinger Cole and Sun Microsystems will take an in-depth look at how you can externalize authorization using next-generation technology that scales! Analyst Felix Gaehtgens will review the market and provide insight into what’s ahead, and Sun Chief Identity Strategist Daniel Raskin will share exciting news about how customers can use OpenSSO to implement a repeatable, scalable process for externalizing authorization.
Register Now for this free Webinar to learn more about:
* What’s happening in the market regarding externalized authorization
* Key trends and priorities
* Actions you should think about for 2010 and beyond
* Fine-grained entitlement enforcement in OpenSSO Express 9
While other vendors offer fine-grained entitlement enforcement as a standalone solution, Sun’s OpenSSO is the only solution to deliver access management, federation, secure Web services and now fine-grained entitlement enforcement — all in a single application.
Date: Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Time: 10:00 am PDT / 1:00 pm EDT / 19.00 CET (check my timezone)
Duration: 1 hour
Speaker: Kuppinger Cole Analyst Felix Gaehtgens and Sun Chief Identity Strategist Daniel Raskin