I emailed my cell phone number to a colleague today so he would know how to reach me in Dallas. He dialed the number I gave him — and reached some guy at the Scottsdale, Arizona, Police Department!

My colleague didn’t know whether to arrange for bail or call a lawyer! Luckily, I had just transposed a couple of digits. I wasn’t in jail after all.

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Scottsdale,
Arizona,
Police

I had lunch with a customer today who has implemented Web Single Sign On using Sun’s Access Manager product. They are in process of migrating a wide range of business applications to the new infrastructure. He mentioned three benefits they had realized:

• Better user experience.
• Improved help desk performance.
• Lower operational costs.

Isn’t it great to hear when an enterprise receives honest-to-goodness, real world business value from technology investment?

Technorati Tags: Identity,
Digital Identity,
Identity Management,
Sun Microsystems.
Access Manager

My colleague Sean O’Neil (aka Desmond) posted a great article about needing valid test data when you implement an Identity Management system. Good stuff.

Technorati Tags: Identity,
Digital Identity,
Identity Management,
Sean O’Neil

My colleague Jonathan Gershater tells how his Dad saved money and time by adopting OpenOffice. Congratulations, Dad, for avoiding payment of the Microsoft ransom by taking the road less travelled!

And congratulations to Jonathan for his cute kids.

Technorati Tags: Open Office

Congratulations, Sara Gates and the Waveset team, for making Eric Norlin’s top ten list!

FYI – I joined Sun after the Waveset acquisition, so I’m not counted among the illustrious Waveset crew. But it has been a privilege to work with these great people.

Thanks to my colleague Vikram Kunchala for pointing me to Eric’s blog

Technorati Tags: Identity,
Digital Identity,
Identity Management,
Sun Microsystems,
Sara Gates

In yesterday’s post, SXIP emphasizes the key success factors Dick Hardt believes are essential for an Identity 2.0 system:

1. Internet-scale – truly portable and not a closed circle of trust.
2. Community driven – many people should be involved in designing the solution and it needs to be able to move all types of identity data. And the transport of the data must be seperate from the payload.
3. Easy to adopt – zero footprint on the browser so that consumers don’t need to download software and simple for websites to implement.
4. Protect privacy – architected so that users don’t need to disclose more than absolutely necessary.
5. Functionality gradient – choice of security level from lightweight to highly secure, so that similar with for example Perl programming, “the easy things are easy and the hard things are possible”.

Okay, these may be necessary, but are they sufficient? I propose two other factors that must be in place:

1. Extremely large scale. Perhaps Dick intended this in the “Internet Scale” statement, but he didn’t explicitly say so. This is essential for mainstream adoption. If user-centric Identity is going to really work, it must be adopted by the big dogs – eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, Google … It must become pervasive.
2. Successful business model. For the big dogs to adopt this, the financial incentives must be just right for both Identity providers and relying partners. What will compel a Bank of America or American Express or Experian to become an Identity provider? Who pays the bill for the large scale infrastructure and operational overhead they will need to put in place? Why should the vendors like eBay, Amazon or Yahoo adopt this stuff, when they have already invested in Identity/Security infrastructures themselves?

I’m convinced that user-centric Identity is as much a business issue as a technology issue. If the compelling business demand is in place, the technology folks will make it work. If not, it will have been an interesting science fair project.

Technorati Tags: Identity,
Digital Identity,
Identity Management,
User-centric Identity,
SXIP

They did it! The Phoenix Suns blew out Kobe Bryant and the Lakers 121-90 to win the first round NBA series in seven games – only the eighth team in NBA history to rally from a 3-1 deficit to win a best-of-seven series. What a team!

Now we have to win four more games to get a chance to battle one of the Texas teams – San Antonio or Dallas. Go Suns!

Technorati Tags: Phoenix Suns,
LA Lakers,
NBA

Since the recently-held Internet Identity Workshop physically closed its doors, lot’s of folks have commented about it:

• Kim Cameron: IIW 2006 Was a Superevent
• Phil Windley: IIW2006 Kudos for Unconferences
• Mark Wilcox: IIW2006 Thoughts
• Kaliya Hamlin: Reflections on IIW
• Johannes Ernst: Kim Cameron thinks IIW “was a superevent”
• Doc Searls: Sorry about Wednesday
• Pete Rowley: Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) 2006A
• John Panzer: Memories of IIW2006
• Tom Maddox: More IIW 21006

And these are just the ones I’ve read. Quite a bit of buzz for a small conference. Must have been the subject matter … and the Identity Characters involved!

Technorati Tags: Identity,
Digital Identity,
Identity Management,
IIW2006

I’m intrigued with the concept of Reputation as it relates to Identity. Two days ago, I posted a tongue-in-cheek series of pictures that addressed the subject, and last December discussed Reputation as a component of my Identity Map structure. Today, Johannes Ernst’s blog led me to Phil Windley’s blog, which linked to a set of slides from a presentation Phil gave at Yahoo.

Johannes summarized Phil’s pertinent definitions as:

• Identity is my story about me.
• Reputation is your story about me.

So, if Identity is a story told by a person about himself, and Reputation is a story about that person by a third party, Authentication happens when the Identity Story and the Reputation Story match. I suppose the strength of authentication is proportional to the precision of the match.

Technorati Tags: Identity,
Digital Identity,
Identity Management,
Reputation

“Its only a game,” said my 12 year old daughter, Holly, as my wife, Claudia, my son, Ryan, and I were cheering loudly for the Phoenix Suns as we huddled around our televsion last night. Just a game, but it was a great game!

The Phoenix Suns pulled out an improbable victory over the Los Angeles Lakers, forcing a game 7 in the first round NBA playoff series. The Suns were without their best perimeter defender, Raja Bell, and Kobe Bryant scored a career playoff best 50 points. But MVP Steve Nash scored 32 points and had 13 rebounds, Tim Thomas made a three-point shot to tie the game at the end of regulation and Shawn Marion and Boris Diaw each scored six points in overtime to seal the victory. How sweet it is!

We’ll be cheering loudly for the Suns again Saturday evening!

Technorati Tags: Pheonix Suns,
Los Angeles Lakers,
NBA