Patent ID: 8516138

Claim:
A method for authentication of customers, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a definition of a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) security group for LDAP authentication, wherein the LDAP security group is associated with authentication rights; receiving a definition of a native security group for native authentication users, wherein the native security group has at least one authentication right not present in the LDAP security group; receiving a customer specification of a list of LDAP servers that are used to successively reject a request for authentication until one of the LDAP servers grants authentication; configuring an LDAP authentication web application and a native authentication web application to connect to a service management database, and configuring the LDAP authentication web application to use the list of LDAP servers; configuring a first Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for LDAP authentication to access the LDAP authentication web application; configuring a second URL for native authentication to access the native authentication web application; assessing authentication requirements of a customer; responsive to assessing, creating a user identifier; responsive to creating the at least one user identifier, associating the at least one user identifier with a security group selected from a group consisting of the LDAP security group and the native security group; and responsive to assessing, notifying a customer of a customer URL selected from the group of URLs consisting of the first URL and the second URL, to use for authentication.