Understanding Typical Business Use Cases

This chapter describes two typical business use cases:

• OpenSSO Enterprise Acts as Service Provider

• OpenSSO Enterprise Acts as Identity Provider

OpenSSO Enterprise Acts as Service Provider

In this use case, Company A is acquired by Company B. The intranets for both companies have been merged, but much of the network infrastructure remains as though they were still two separate entities. Company A maintains an Active Directory domain, and Company B maintains an OpenSSO Enterprise single sign-on infrastructure in its own domain.

In order for Company A employees to access some internal applications available to Company B employees, a trust relationship is created between the Company A domain and the Company B domain. The trust relationship is created using the Web Services Federation protocol. Company A employees, signed on to their Microsoft Windows computers, can now navigate to the Company B paycheck application by using a Web Services Federation secure token.

OpenSSO Enterprise Acts as Identity Provider

In this use case, Company B wants to offer its employees a new online collaborative environment based on Microsoft SharePoint Services. The collaboration solutions is an outsourced model where Company C provides dedicated SharePoint Services to its customers. In order to provide single sign-on to the Company B employees, Company C leverages the federation services provided by ADFS. A trust relationship is created between created between the Company B OpenSSO Enterprise Identity Provider and the Company C Resource Identity Provider /Security Token Service.