Business i-names

i-names are a new level of addressing: the step up to a unified communications address, a single address that will work for phone, fax, email, voicemail, VoIP, IM, SMS, videoconferencing, and whatever-comes-next.

The business benefits of this new level of addressing are clear. i-names will:

• Permanently solve the problem of how to keep track of constantly changing directory information.
• Eliminate expensive, time-consuming change-of-address procedures and automatically maintain persistent contact with customers, suppliers, partners, shareholders, and retirees.
• Provide customers with a single persistent point of contact for the entire lifecycle of a product or service: pre-sale, ordering, order tracking, registration, warranty, customer services, renewal, upgrade.
• Give employees one consistent way to stay in touch with other employees, departments, or positions.
• Assign and maintain permanent addresses for Web services and other business-critical applications that cannot be disrupted by changing names and addresses.

Based on the OASIS XRI Open Standard

In order to understand more about i-names—and to fully appreciate their utility—you need to know the history of the Extensible Resource Identifier (XRI) standard.

Pioneering work by Visa International, AMD, and Nomura Research Institute (among others) led to the establishment in January 2003 of the XRI Technical Committee at OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). The committee has since expanded to include Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, and other contributors.

Now the second generation of XRI specifications has arrived. XRI innovators Cordance and AmSoft have teamed up with NeuStar, the world's leading provider of communications interoperability services, to open global XRI registry services under contract with XDI.org.

The Names May Change, but the Numbers Won't

XRI is the first global identifier standard that combines the power of human-friendly names—identifiers in any language that are easy for people to remember and understand (but may change over time)—with machine-friendly numbers—identifiers that are permanently assigned and never change.

This means all global i-names have a corresponding global i-number that represents a permanent identity that will never be reassigned even if a global i-name expires or is sold.

i-numbers are the key to how XRI applications such as i-mail and i-share can maintain persistent links even when an i-name changes. They are ideal for any Internet or extranet application that needs industrial-grade persistent addressing, e.g., digital rights management, digital archiving, Web services, etc.

Internationalization: Designed for the World

The XRI standard is built on the IETF/W3C standard for Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs), meaning XRIs can be used in any Unicode character set.

Right now the global i-name registry supports i-name registration in Latin, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean character sets. Additional character sets will be phased in throughout 2006 and 2007.

Strong Anti-Phishing Protection: Peace of Mind at the Point of Contact

As you no doubt know, phishing—tricking users with deceptive look-alike characters in URLs—is a widespread Internet scam.

The global XRI registry is designed to prevent phishing by mapping look-alike characters to a non-overlapping character set. While this slightly reduces the pool of XRIs that can be registered, it increases the quality of the registrations for everyone and makes address-based phishing a thing of the past.

I-Services: Making Identity Easier, Making Connections That Last

Registering your business i-name and i-number today provides more than just trademark protection. You can begin using them immediately to offer new XRI-based identity services for your Web site, including:

 Single Sign-On Service: The first futureproof method of supporting new Internet identity systems (SAML, InfoCard, OpenID, LID, Yadis) without needing to change identifiers or your user experience.

 Contact Service: A simple, safe way to accept authenticated messages from your Web site without opening yourself to spam.

 Forwarding Service: Create permanent Web addresses for any resource on your Web site that will keep working, no matter how often you reorganize.

 Unified Address Book Service (arriving soon): Give your employees the first address book they can use everywhere for everything.

And these are just the first services available using the open, extensible, XML-based XRI addressing infrastructure. Read more about forthcoming i-mail, i-share, and identity verification and reputation services.

EnCirca is accredited as an i-Broker by XDI

Global XRI registry services are governed by XDI.org, an international non-profit public trust organization. Similar to the role ICANN plays for the DNS infrastructure, XDI.org's Global Services Specifications establish the policies and procedures for operation of i-name/i-number global registry services and accreditation of i-brokers—the ISP-like service providers that offer global i-name/i-number registration services to the public.

Ready to step up to a unified communications address? Register your business i-name and i-number here.