"A year ago, the skeptics doubted that we could agree on the shape of the table, much less collaborate on solving some of the industry's toughest problems. Surprise - we did just that and today we've taken a huge step forward."

"Sun and Microsoft are working together ... and quite well at that."

That was how Scott McNealy characterized the first year of progress between Sun and Microsoft one year exactly after their landmark agreement in 2004.

Announcing together with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer a series of measures to enhance product interoperability, including the development of new specifications that enable Web single sign-on (SSO) between systems that use Liberty and WS-* Web service architectures, McNealy said:

"Single sign-on experience between the Solaris-based Operating System, Sun Java Enterprise System and Microsoft Windows Server has been customers' top request."

"This is just the beginning of a long list of projects we're working on," he added.

"Over the past year we have worked to establish great communication at all levels between our companies, from regular executive meetings to in-depth working sessions with our engineers," said Steve Ballmer.

"In the first year, we've moved from the courtroom to the computer lab. Now we're moving from the lab to the market," he added.

The companies have jointly developed and published two draft specifications: Web Single Sign-On Metadata Exchange (Web SSO MEX) Protocol and Web Single Sign-On Interoperability Profile (Web SSO Interop Profile). These new specifications enable browser-based Web SSO between security domains that use Liberty ID-FF and WS-Federation. Products that support the Web SSO MEX Protocol and the Web SSO Interop Profile will enable companies to provide users with an improved Web SSO experience from their Web browsers.

As part of the companies' ongoing commitment to improving interoperability across their respective product lines, Microsoft and Sun also announced plans to support the new specifications within their product portfolios, including Microsoft Windows Server and Sun Java Enterprise System.

Microsoft and Sun welcome participation in the further development of these draft specifications through the Web services protocol workshop process, and ultimately will submit them to a standards organization for finalization and ratification as industry standards. Drafts of the new specifications are available on Sun's Web site at http://developers.sun.com/techtopics/identity/interop/index.html for anyone to review and comment on.