Sun Microsystems didn't participate in this review because of its recent acquisition of WaveSet, which the company hopes will garner it a bigger share of the identity-management/provisioning marketplace. Sun also says it hopes to position itself as a full-service provider by offering a complete package of directory server, Web access-control and identity-management products.
The first piece of that package, Sun's Identity Manager, will provide user provisioning, synchronization and password self-service, and will integrate with any directory store, the company says. Rollout is slated for this month.
The second piece, the Sun One Directory Server, is already a market leader. The latest enterprise edition comes bundled with extra security, failover and load-balancing services. In addition, similar to Novell's DirXML, Sun says it will be able to sync data between disparate directory stores.
Finally, Sun's Access Manager provides single sign-on, Web access control and federation. Sun says it uses an agent-based model (as do most of the products we tested), because it believes this approach will scale better.
Of the three pieces, Access Manager needs the most work. That's where Sun plans on making large investments in the near future.
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