SSO comparison request from executive management

[Tom Scavo]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 6:24 PM, IAM David Bantz <dabantz at alaska.edu> wrote:
> As I feared, vendor messages maligning Shibboleth as an outdated solution
> that is a nightmare to manage have triggered the following request from my
> executive management:
>
>> David,
>> I continue to get messages (primarily from Ping) about options to Shib.
>> Do you have time to do a quick comparison (functionality and cost) of Shib,
>> Ping and other vendors that should be on our radar for UA?
>
> I've replied briefly indicating why I regard the statements about Shibboleth
> as false, but I'm pleading again for a strong well-grounded response to this
> request.

The InCommon Federation Interoperability Working Group [1] chaired by
Walter Hoehn from the University of Memphis, is in the final stages of
preparing a SAML V2.0 Implementation Profile for Federation
Interoperability (linked on the WG home page). I imagine you could use
this document to compare the functionality of Shibboleth and
PingFederate, but total cost of ownership is another matter, I'm not
sure how to measure that in each case.

There is also the SAML Software Guidelines [2] published by InCommon.
In order for PingFederate (or any implementation) to be mentioned on
that page, it would have to correctly consume InCommon metadata. Apart
from the implementations already mentioned on that page, I don't know
of any software that does that.

Hope this helps,

Tom

[1] https://spaces.internet2.edu/x/ioRRBQ
[2] https://spaces.internet2.edu/x/R4HPAg