Nearly 45 different corporate representatives of the global identity and internet communities have launched the Kantara Initiative, an organisation which aims at dealing with the interoperability issues among identity-enabled enterprise and web-based applications and services.

The organisation will focus on providing the necessary support for the adoption of interoperable identity-enabled services across industries, regions and fixed and mobile networks, and the launch of the project is the result of a year of strategic planning involving stakeholders representing the entire identity ecosystem. Kantara Initiative community members will collaborate on projects that make use of all identity frameworks, protocols and specifications currently available.

Oracle Identity Management's vice president Roger Sullivan has been appointed president of the 2009 Kantara Initiative Board of Trustees. The board of trustee members include AOL, BT, CA, Intel, Internet Society, Fidelity Investments, Novell, NRI, NTT, Oracle, PayPal and Sun Microsystems.