Interesting news this week: Microsoft, SAP, and Siemens have been awarded the SAML interoperable certification for their SAML 2.0 products for the first time. From a customer perspective this excellent news - cross-vendor certifications by independent third parties are a good decisions tools for selecting products. While even a comprehensive test suite cannot guarantee perfect interoperability, it puts the responsibility for debugging the most blatant problem into the court of the vendors.

My town (Burlington, MA) has just revived the Information Systems Advisory Committee (ISAC) to assist in the alignment of the school system's and the administration's IT departments. With many high-technology companies in town, the administration has been at the forefront of the IT development, with a respectable web presence that dates back into the 90s - at a time where only few towns and cities took the web seriously.

To support the new projects, I have been appointed to a position in the ISAC, and I am looking forward to helping the town staff to decide how to move forward.