| FAQs about DGI and Liberty Alliance |
1) What is Liberty Alliance's relationship with Drummond Group Inc.?
In December 2006, Liberty Alliance announced a new relationship with DGI Inc. (DGI) to bring a variety of new testing capabilities to the Liberty Interoperable(TM) program. DGI is now an outsource partner of Liberty Alliance, providing testing services for products seeking the Liberty Alliance Interoperable(TM) certification. Liberty Alliance remains the adjudicator of compliance and the certification authority for the program.
2) Who is Drummond Group Inc. (DGI)?
DGI is a global leader in B2B software testing and certification, works with software vendors, industry associations, supply chains and the standards community by conducting interoperability and conformance testing on open standards, publishing related strategic research and developing vertical industry strategies. DGI was founded in 1999 and has tested hundreds of international software products used in vertical industries such as automotive, consumer product goods, financial services, government, petroleum, pharmaceutical and retail.
3) Why did the Liberty Alliance select DGI?
Liberty Alliance completed a long-term assessment of its interoperability program and realized it would need to scale to meet imminent market demand for interoperability testing. It also decided that the customers of identity management solutions would benefit from a full-matrix interoperability pool of products that have all interoperated with each other at a date certain. DGI was the perfect outsource partner to bring both of these features to our program as well as the "bonus" feature of being able to deliver all of this to participants remotely through patented processes for delivering online product testing.
4) Why the change to the testing program?
The overarching goal is to provide new global capabilities to the testing program. Liberty began testing products for true interoperability of identity specifications in 2003 and at the beginning of 2007, more than 80 products and solutions from vendors around the world have passed Liberty Alliance testing. The success of the program is demonstrated by the wide scale deployment of Liberty Interoperable products and by the increasing number of RFPs issued around the world that require vendors to have passed Liberty Alliance testing. Liberty needed to find ways to scale the program to meet new growth and interoperability demands, especially now that ID-WSF 2.0 is final and works seamlessly with SAML 2.0.
5) What is different now about the testing program? How will the tests be performed?
The former model required vendors to travel and test for five straight days. With the DGI testing administration, tests will now be performed online and will take several weeks to complete. This is a significant enhancement to the program given participants can now schedule sessions more conveniently. Additionally, all participants will be required to test with everyone participating in the testing event, as opposed to the current program which requires vendors to demonstrate interoperability with at least two other participants.
6) Does this mean that prior testing is now invalid?
All previous product certification is as valid as ever. The new program does not deprecate any previous certification. That said, there are new products and implementations coming to market every year and customers who wish to ensure their vendors remain interoperable with all other products available should consider the new full matrix certification as a requirement going forward.
7) What is interoperability testing and why is it important?
With network protocol technology standards, products are developed with a best effort to follow a specification document produced by a standards body. If everyone implements the specification the same way, they should all seamlessly interoperate. But until you have tested products with each other to a strict testing plan that is designed to dig for potential bugs, deployers cannot be sure that compliance or conformance claims are actually going to result in true interoperability. Liberty and DGI are providing that assurance to deployers and stand by it with the certification logo program.
8) How often will testing be conducted?
The initial plan is to offer testing approximately every six months. This schedule may increase based on market demand and as roll-out of the new program continues.
9) When will we see more about Liberty testing?
Liberty posts upcoming testing events on its website at http://projectliberty.org/index.php/liberty/news_events/events and maintains an updated list of all products that have passed interoperability testing at http://projectliberty.org/index.php/liberty/liberty_interoperable/interoperable_products.