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By Stephen Shankland, 16 May 2005 09:35

NEWS Sun and Microsoft have demonstrated "single sign-on" software that, when it's widely available, will let a person log in once to use network services which previously required separate authentications.

The technology, which Sun CEO Scott McNealy and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer discussed on Friday, helps bridge a rift many computer users and administrators must wrestle with during the login process.

Ballmer said: "We're poised to leave the computer lab now and really enter the marketplace together."

The software will be incorporated into future versions of the companies' products - probably in 2006, Ballmer said. For now, it's the most concrete example of co-operation between the companies whose fierce competition was blunted somewhat by a 2004 agreement to settle legal issues, share patents and make their software interoperable.

Shawn Willett, an analyst with Current Analysis, said: "This was one of the main areas of contention."

While there is co-operation on this subject, however, there remain other software Microsoft and Sun products firmly separated by technical, if not political, differences: Microsoft's Windows and Sun's Solaris operating system, for example, and Sun's Java software and Microsoft's analog, .Net.

Still, the co-operation is significant for companies whose cultures and engineering styles were so far apart that it took about half a year just to get collaborating employees talking to each other.

Next up will be co-operation in a number of other domains: storage software and hardware; unified systems management; web services standards for messaging and event-tracking; and Windows terminal services which let PCs act like thin clients by leaving the heavy lifting of computing to central servers.

McNealy and Ballmer repeatedly emphasised how their customers pushed them into the alliance and are delighted with its progress. But some see merit in co-operation with other rivals as well.

William Hurley, an analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group said: "One thing that was not mentioned or asked: What about Linux? The brushing-over on this topic was disappointing since the vast majority of customers who operate either Windows or Solaris also use Linux."

Actually, Linux wasn't completely ignored. McNealy conspicuously omitted it from a list of operating systems he predicts will have long-term viability.

"There are two clear survivors in the operating system marketplace. Those are Solaris and Windows," McNealy said. "I'm not sure who third place is in the long term."

Sun and Microsoft previously advocated separate, incompatible technology for the authentication process - Sun's choice of the name Liberty for its specification was a jab at Microsoft's rival Passport service. Microsoft largely scrapped Passport as a centralised authentication site for a different - but still incompatible - approach called Web Services Federation.

Now the companies are moving on. They proposed two specifications, the Single Sign-on Metadata Exchange Protocol and the Web Single Sign-On Interoperability Profile, which make single-sign on possible with web browsers tapping into either Liberty or WS-Federation systems.

The partnership brings Sun into closer agreement with several other companies developing so-called web services standards which govern sophisticated business transactions on the internet. "This is not just Sun-Microsoft," Current Analysis’ Willett said. "This is Sun-Microsoft-IBM-BEA Systems."

The companies haven't yet chosen which standards body they'll use to try to standardise the technology, McNealy said.

Stephen Shankland writes for CNET News.com