In a speech given yesterday by Rich Green, Sun’s Executive Vice President, Software, at the Sun Americas Sales Meeting, he remarked, “Planet Earth needs Identity everywhere. It’s not just a good idea. It’s the law.”

Well said, Rich. Couldn’t agree more.

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

Last night I had a stimulating conversation with a colleague, Shawn Malaney, about the importance of relationships (or the lack thereof) between telephone companies and their customers. An AT&T customer for over 25 years, Shawn currently has three separate accounts with AT&T. Even though he enjoys their service and faithfully pays three bills each month, he knows that AT&T has no idea that the three bills represent a relationship with just one Shawn Malaney.

This highlights a major problem and huge opportunity for telecommunications carriers and their subscribers. I recounted to Shawn the presentation about relationships that Bob Blakley gave at the Catalyst Conference in June. In response to a question I posed, Bob responded, “Companies that succeed online will have close billing relationship with customers. Telcos are there now. Startups are seeking to build such relationships” (paraphrased).

It is true that telcos could have the upper hand in online relationships because they do have such long-term, trusted relationships. However, such relationships could be so much better than they are.

Suppose that AT&T really took advantage (in the good sense of the word) of the fact that Shawn had multiple accounts and a 25 year history of faithful payments. AT&T could offer Shawn premium, preferred services that spanned his multiple accounts, confident that this would provide additional benefit to both Shawn and themselves. This would give Shawn financial reward and access to better services, plus the incentive to stick around for several more years. AT&T would benefit from additional customer loyalty, plus additional revenue from a satisfied subscriber.

So, it is clear to me in this case that Shawn’s Identity, while vitally important, is less important that the Relationship he has with AT&T. Leveraging Identity information more effectively to strengthen the Relationship benefits both customer and service provider.

Technorati Tags: Identity, Identity Management, Digital Identity, Relationship, Telecommunications, AT&T

Sun Microsystems’ fiscal year 2009 began July 1st. Traditionally, July is a time for we Sun folk to take a few deep breaths, cash in some vacation days to recharge batteries and make plans for the new year. Interestingly enough, I was incredibly busy in July with customer meetings and strategic projects, to complement my deep breathing and relaxing family vacation.

Next week will bring another intense week of new year stuff. I will fly to Washington, DC, to participate in Sun’s annual Americas Sales Meeting, where we will all get grounded in the strategy and tactics for the year ahead.

So, with a new year beginning and a new title on my business card, “Chief Identity Solution Architect, North American Software Practice,” now is the time to also set a few goals for this blog.

During the next year, I plan to do the following:

• Publish one or two posts per week with at least a modicum of profound thought in the area of Identity Management and related technology, markets and business.
• On each intervening day, post short thoughts, quotes, ideas, links or questions on a variety of subjects that may be rattling around in my mind.
• Renovate, re-launch and expand the “Whodentity” concept I started a couple of years ago but allowed to fall hopelessly out of date, to foster community among those involved in “The Magic and Science of Identity Management.”
• Use the blog as an experimental sandbox for concepts and technologies related to Digital Identity and Social Media.

If you have ideas or advice on how I should accomplish these goals, or would like to participate with me in some innovative way, please let me know.

Happy New Year!

Technorati Tags: New Year, Resolution, Identity Management, Digital Identity, Identity, Blogging, Social Media

Yesterday, my colleague Ludovic Poitou, the Sun Microsystems OpenDS Community Lead, announced the release of OpenDS 1.0.0.

Congratulations on reaching this significant milestone!

Technorati Tags: IdentityManagement, Identity, DigitalIdentity, LDAP, OpenDS, Directory

You can now read the Discovering Identity blog on your mobile device at identity.mofuse.mobi, courtesy of mofuse.

Thanks to Doc Searls for the tip.

Technorati Tags: identity, identitymanagement, digitalidentity, mobility

My Sun Microsystems colleagues Pat Patterson and Daniel Raskin discuss interoperability of OpenSSO and Microsoft CardSpace in this short video.

Well done, gentlemen.

Technorati Tags: CardSpace, OpenSSO, Identity, IdentityManagement, DigitalIdentity

In the Sun Microsystems hospitality suite at the Catalyst Conference, each guest was given the opportunity to strike an athletic pose for the cover of “Sun Illustrated” magazine. Here is yours truly trying to re-live the long-gone glory years of of small-town football.

Don’t worry, folks. I’m not going to leave my day job to launch a comeback!

I installed public beta one “Flock 2 with Firefox inside” last night. Other than the fact that I lost my favorites bar links in the process, things went quite smoothly. I was also able to download and install my favorite extensions.

Technorati Tags: Flock, Firefox, Blogging

Here is a “wordle” of this blog. Thanks to Eve Maler for the tip.

Technorati Tags: Identity,
Digital Identity,
Identity Management,
Wordle

To complement the summaries of Catalyst Conference sessions I posted last night, I offer you my “Top Ten List” of major themes addressed in the conference, presented in David Lettman-esque reverse order, from the more mundane to the more futuristic or controversial:

10. The provisioning market is quite mature, with success predominating in most projects and real business value being captured. The focus is now on using best practices to ensure successful vendor selection and project implementation.

9. Federation technology is ready for prime time, particularly with recent improvements which ease implementation and use. Focus must be given to the business and relationship issues that enable use of federation.

8. Role management is becoming mainstream, with particular focus on enhancing provisioning and compliance auditing. Additional use of business roles to give visibility to business performance may emerge in the future. There is emerging demand for standards to enable exchange of roles between different Identity Systems.

7. Passwords are still the most widely used method of Authentication. Stronger authentication methods using biometrics and smart cards, have seen slow adoption. Strong Identity Assurance, including strong registration methods, is increasingly needed.

6. Effective management of privileged accounts, which represent a major risk area for enterprises is not effectively covered by existing Identity management systems. Additional work is needed to really address this gap.

5. Identity Services are emerging both as for “Identity as a Service” business model and as ways to access functionality in existing Identity products. Identity customers, particularly members of the Identity Services Working Group, are asking for standards to enable interoperability of Identity Services.

4. On some fronts, Attribute Based Access Control is favored over Role Based Access Control, such as in the federal government where uniform role definition cannot be reached across multiple agencies. Work will be need to more clearly define where each method, or a combination of methods should be used.

3. The chasm between user-driven Identity and enterprise Identity management may ultimately be bridged by leveraging elements of both disciplines.

2. “GRC” is a “four letter word.” Because GRC is neither a market or distinct solution, using the GRC term tends to confuse the discussion of Governance, Risk Management and Compliance disciplines, which are distinct and valuable enterprise activities, all performed by different people.

And finally … drum roll please …

1. The hot new buzzword is Relationships, which give context to Identities. A Relationship Object Model was proposed to be used as a basis for leveraging formally-defined relationships in Identity systems.

Technorati Tags: Identity,
Digital Identity,
Identity Management,
Catalyst Conference,
BurtonGroupCatalyst08