Press release: Deutsche Post

Deutsche Post chooses Bull Evidian software as the core security framework for its new-generation IT Service Backbone (SBB)

Deutsche Post corporate - MAIL division has chosen Evidian AccessMaster software as the core security framework for the new generation of its Service BackBone (SBB) integration infrastructure. Providing the foundation layer for Deutsche Post's whole new Enterprise Application Architecture (EAA) and built on the latest Liberty Alliance standards, SBB is designed to be used as a global service framework by all Deutsche Post applications. Putting SAML technologies to work, AccessMaster will therefore provide the security services in one of the most advanced and ambitious "Service Oriented Architecture" (SOA) implementations in the world today.

Paris, December 10, 2003: Evidian AccessMaster software has been chosen by Deutsche Post as the security foundation component of SBB (Service Backbone), Deutsche Post's new-generation integration infrastructure, dedicated to provide the service framework for Deutsche Post corporate - MAIL division applications.

Provide a fully standard, service-oriented integration infrastructure for Deutsche Post applications

Deutsche Post WorldNet is among the international leaders in mail services, logistics and financial services. With 280,000 employees, Deutsche Post WorldNet group includes Deutsche Post, DHL and Postbank. To optimize its IT integration infrastructure so as to better serve its business processes, Deutsche Post has launched SBB, a strategic IT integration platform dedicated to support Deutsche Post's new Enterprise Application Architecture (EAA).

"SBB has been designed to address the classical challenges faced by large companies such as ours, with the complexity of home-grown infrastructures" said Michael Herr, Chief Technical System Architect of Deutsche Post Mail. "In many large organizations, historical and incremental IT development has often led to narrowly focused islands of solution, with low ability to adapt to holistic, business-driven approaches. This generally results in high functional redundancy between applications, fragmented responsibilities, plus a high effort for modification. At Deutsche Post corporate - MAIL division, we have designed our Enterprise Application Architecture and SBB, a new generation integration infrastructure, as an innovative answer to this challenge. A core strategic project at Deutsche Post, it will allow us to better support our business processes, improve time to market and reduce IT costs".

Fully service oriented, Deutsche Post's new Enterprise Application Architecture is designed to provide a service layer abstraction between the business requirements and the IT technology. SBB provides the foundation for this architecture. Offering a powerful service oriented integration backbone, it offers complete integration services (service directory, message handling…) built on fully standard technologies: Java, J2EE , XML, SAML, …

Deutsche Post needed a strong security solution to provide advanced web service security based on SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) to fit in the fully standard, service-oriented SBB architecture. It also needed to support Deutsche Post's existing environments, and to offer strong scalability, to be able to support, ultimately, the hundreds of thousands of applications users, whether employees, partners or customers.

Ensuring complete authentication, authorization, SSO and audit services, implementing the latest SAML standards

After market evaluation of identity and access management products, Deutsche Post has chosen Evidian AccessMaster as the security framework solution for SBB, providing both authentication, authorization, single-sign-on and audit services.

Ensuring SAML-based authentication and authorization, AccessMaster will keep security policies from being dispersed across heterogeneous applications and services, enabling the applications to provide all users with personalized and secure access to the services and information they need.

As a result, AccessMaster will contribute - as a component (technical service participant) of SBB - to the safe deployment of Deutsche Post's EAA. In a global way, Deutsche Post expects strong benefits from SBB and EAA deployments: better IT support for Deutsche Post business processes, better time to market (ability to set up new services within a few days, focus on service implementation rather than data connectivity…), easy maintenance and updating, plus IT TCO reduction (reusable and common components...).

A core SBB infrastructure is already deployed at Deutsche Post. The roll-out of the second generation of SBB, incorporating AccessMaster security technology, is planed to begin in the second quarter of 2004.

"SBB is a strategic IT project at Deutsche Post" said Michael Herr. "Therefore, we needed a strong security solution to rely on. We were impressed by Evidian's ability to provide comprehensive SSO, identity and access management services on all our IT environments, and particularly within our new web-services oriented, fully standard-based SBB architecture. With Evidian software, we are convinced that we will be able to grow our SBB and extend it with confidence."

"Deutsche Post is among the companies that define and build today the IT solutions for tomorrow, in an innovative and pragmatic way" said Philippe Pradat, Product Group Director at Evidian. "We met at Deutsche Post a strong vision on new IT service-oriented architecture, leveraging the latest standards. This is a vision that we share with our security software, and we are honored that AccessMaster has been chosen to contribute—as the core Security Management component— to Deutsche Post's impressive SBB project".

About Deutsche Post

Deutsche Post is a modern and effective partner within Deutsche Post World Net. Every day they move 72 million letter items. The direct marketing section in particular is ensuring high growth rates. The company is therefore excellently positioned. In the letter mail sector, Deutsche Post is the leading service provider in Europe. In their outlets they have around 660 million instances of customer contact every year. 230,000 employees, all highly trained, ensure that this position is continually being strengthened and that Deutsche Post will continue steadily to develop even further.