The Liberty Alliance and Microsoft have been at the opposite poles of identify protocols for secure web transactions. In this context, each organization supported a different set of protocols. But the situation might be changing, as Liberty Alliance and the Redmond Company have begun contemplating a reconciliation between ID-web Services Framework and WS-Star.

Microsoft failed to comment in any way the discussions related to the identity protocols, but Roger Sullivan, the president of the Liberty Alliance and vice president of Oracle Corp.'s identity management section, revealed that the Liberty Alliance is ready to converge ID-web Services Framework and WS-Star.

"We have finally put down the boxing gloves and are trying to figure out how to solve our customers' problems. We believe the Web Services Framework from Liberty very well complements the WS-Star protocols," commented Sullivan for the IDG News Service.

Converging the two separate sets of standards poses issues in the corporate environment. First off, the enterprises that have adopted one of the two standards have automatically invested into an elaborate and expensive infrastructure of identity. The transition from a single set of identify protocols to the combined stack must tailor fit the existing identity infrastructures, independent of what standards have been adopted.

Another detrimental issue might be a delay in the adoption of identity protocols correlated with the marriage between ID-web Services Framework and WS-Star. "We have customers who have deployed WSF, and we need to help them reconcile the two standards stacks so when convergence happens, it will be logical," Sullivan added.