FOSTER CITY, Calif., Sept. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Rearden Commerce, creator of the first online Personal Assistant and the largest marketplace for services of all kinds, announced today it has been awarded with a 2007 Identity Deployment of the Year (IDDY) Award from Liberty Alliance, the global identity consortium working to build a more trusted Internet for consumers, governments and businesses worldwide.

Rearden Commerce is one of four organizations recognized by the Liberty Alliance for its industry-leading use of Liberty's open, privacy-respecting, interoperable identity specifications. The company was specifically recognized by Liberty for the speed with which it deployed its standards-based identity management solution, based on technology from Ping Identity. Rearden Commerce's initial deployment of Ping Identity's PingFederate went live on July 9, 2007 and within one month, Rearden Commerce federated with 15 companies supporting 10-20 percent of all user sessions. The Rearden Commerce platform provides single sign on capabilities via a wide variety of industry open standards, including SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0 protocols or the WS- Federation protocol, enabling corporations to provide secure seamless access to their employees without any additional user authentication.

"We are proud to be recognized by a global standards organization like Liberty Alliance for our proven successes with digital identity management," said Chuck Mortimore, Rearden Commerce's director of platform services. "Liberty carefully evaluated the benefits that Rearden Commerce's digital identity management solution delivers to our users; the ROI our application is demonstrating; and how our solution is successfully addressing a wide range of identity issues. Liberty's thorough analysis is great validation that companies can rely on Rearden Commerce for helping them conduct more secure and privacy-respecting online transactions."

Delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS) to more than half a million employees in more than six hundred companies, the Rearden Commerce Personal Assistant leverages federation technology to help users find and purchase the services they need based on their preferences and company policies. Identity federation allows enterprises a standards-based approach to securely link and exchange identity information across partner, supplier and customer organizations. It effectively bridges separate security domains to provide companies with the ability to secure their cross- boundary interactions -- removing friction, improving productivity, gaining efficiency and enabling competitive differentiation.

As Rearden Commerce users schedule travel, dining reservations, corporate entertainment, package shipments, web conferences and other services, the Rearden Commerce Personal Assistant automatically updates their calendars and notifies them of any changes. With federated identity management, Rearden Commerce enables its customers to leverage existing identity systems, keep control over credentials, manage all policies and allow users to easily and securely interact with more than 137,000 service merchants. With Rearden Commerce's single login and password capabilities, employees enjoy instant, secure access to the services and company resources they need to do their jobs.

Through the use of federation technology, organizations deploying the Rearden Commerce Personal Assistant have been rapidly achieving high levels of user adoption. By making it easy for their employees to find and buy services from preferred providers offering negotiated discounts, organizations typically save 20-30 percent on the services purchased through the system.

About Liberty Alliance

Liberty Alliance is the only global identity organization with a membership base that includes technology vendors, consumer service providers and educational and government organizations working together to build a more trusted Internet by addressing the technology, business and privacy aspects of digital identity management. The Liberty Alliance Management Board consists of representatives from AOL, Ericsson, Fidelity Investments, France Telecom, HP, Intel, Novell, NTT, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems. Liberty Alliance works with identity organizations worldwide to ensure all voices are included in the global identity discussion and regularly holds and participates in public events designed to advance the harmonization and interoperability of CardSpace, Liberty Federation (SAML 2.0), Liberty Web Services, OpenID and WS-* specifications. More information about Liberty Alliance as well as information about how to join many of its public groups and mail lists is available at http://www.projectliberty.org/.

Rearden Commerce(TM)

Rearden Commerce, Inc. provides the first online personal assistant that helps people quickly find, purchase and manage the services they need, based on personal preferences and company policies. The Rearden Personal Assistant provides easy access to the world's largest marketplace for services, instantly connecting people to more than 137,000 merchants. Whether it's booking a flight or a hotel, making a restaurant reservation, finding event tickets, scheduling a conference call or shipping a package, the Rearden Personal Assistant simplifies the complex services landscape into one user-friendly experience. With Rearden Commerce, the power of the intelligent Web is finally realized. Rearden Commerce is headquartered in Foster City, CA. For more information, visit http://www.reardencommerce.com/.

CONTACT: Marian Hughes, +1-708-246-0083, mhughes@tieronepr.com, or Kim
Amsbaugh, +1-650-815-1724, kamsbaugh@tieronepr.com, both for Rearden
Commerce

Web site: http://www.reardencommerce.com/
http://www.projectliberty.org/

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