The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache® Syncope™ 3.0

Open source solution offers fully-fledged IAM system covering provisioning, reconciliation and reporting needs, access management, and API management


WILMINGTON, Del., Nov. 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 open source projects and initiatives, is pleased to announce Apache Syncope 3.0, the first major release in four years from Apache® Syncope™.

With over 2,000 commits, the release of Apache Syncope 3.0 marks the point where the project offers a fully-fledged Identity Management & Access Management (IAM) system covering provisioning, reconciliation and reporting needs, access management, and API management.

In an Identity and Access Management (IAM) market dominated by proprietary solutions, Apache Syncope integrates the best-of-breed open source IAM solutions for managing digital identities in enterprise environments and is implemented in Java EE technology and released under Apache 2.0 license.

New Apache Syncope Features
Apache Syncope 3.0 introduces greater deployment flexibility. All components were rewritten to be based on Spring Boot 2.7 and JDK 11 LTS, and JDK 17 LTS is fully supported. This work enables each component to be run as either a web application inside a supported JavaEE container or a standalone application or Docker image.

Keymaster
Keymaster enables dynamic service discovery. All components register into Keymaster at startup so components can find each other for intra-component communication. Additionally, Keymaster is a key-value store for configuration parameters and directory for defined domains.

Keymaster can be implemented as either a set of RESTful services for traditional deployments or microservice-orientated deployments using a separate container/pod based on Apache Zookeeper.

Web Access (WA)
Based on Apereo CAS, Web Access adds Authentication, Authorization, Single Sign, OpenID Connect and SAML 2.0 support to Apache Syncope. Web Access is integrated with Keymaster, Core and Admin UI to offer centralized configuration and management.

Secure Remote Access (SRA)
Built on Spring Cloud Gateway, Secure Remote Access provides legacy application protection as it integrates with WA and other third-party Access Managers that implement standard protocols such as OpenID Connect and SAML.

As well as benefiting from all the configuration and feature options in Spring Cloud Gateway, SRA is integrated into Keymaster, Core and Admin UI for centralized configuration and management.

Revised component: Enduser UI
The End-user UI provides a web-based application for self-registration, self-service and password reset. This component was entirely rewritten in Apache Syncope 3.0, to be technologically aligned with Console UI and based on Apache Wicket. The communication between End-user UI and Core is exclusively REST-based.

“The Syncope community is very excited to finalize the long work that has led to Syncope 3.0,” said Francesco Chicchiriccò, V.P., Apache Syncope board member. “We have been able to integrate other widely adopted Open Source projects such as Apereo CAS and Spring Cloud Gateway into a unified tool. This means that users can now handle all the major aspects of Identity and Access Management (IAM) with a single deployment. We are also extremely proud of the cross-contributions we have been able to develop and receive from other projects—It’s important to note that this is something that’s just not possible within the proprietary software world.”

Apache Syncope is used in many organizations and companies including defense (the Italian Army), education (University of Helsinki), entertainment (PTC Vuforia AR platform) finance, food distribution, healthcare, public sector, tourism (Virgin Voyages,) and other industries.

“For applications at the core of our infrastructure, we have started a long-running process to rebuild our approach on top of Cloud Computing and best-of-breed software components, including Apache Syncope,” says Matt Jansen, Team Lead at Gordon Food Services. “One of the things we like about Syncope is how quickly security vulnerabilities are addressed, and we're also looking forward to some of the new features in version 3.0.”

Additional Resources

About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)
Founded in 1999, the Apache Software Foundation exists to provide software for the public good with support from more than 70 sponsors. ASF’s open source software is used ubiquitously around the world with more than 8,400 committers contributing to 320+ active projects including Apache Superset, Apache Camel, Apache Flink, Apache HTTP Server, Apache Kafka, and Apache Airflow. The Foundation’s open source projects and community practices are considered industry standards, including the widely adopted Apache License 2.0, the podling incubation process, and a consensus-driven decision model that enables projects to build strong communities and thrive. https://apache.org

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Joe Brockmeier
press@apache.org
Vice President, Marketing & Publicity
The Apache Software Foundation