* Service-centric identity to emerge
What will 2007 bring in the identity space? Here’s what some folks in the industry are predicting.
Oracle’s Phil Hunt leads off by forecasting “the emergence of ‘service-centric identity’ as enterprises begin to discuss how personally identifiable information is used by applications and services within and between enterprise applications.” You might be able to guess that Phil’s job at Oracle is to promote the new Identity Governance Framework, which I told you about last month.
Digital ID World’s Phil Becker and Eric Norlin came up with a whopping 10 predictions:
1. Identity-related acquisitions will slow to a steady pace.
2. Venture capital continues to fund identity companies.
3. URL-based identity begins a cycle of real adoption in the blogosphere and alpha geek communities.
4. In 2007, NAC [network access control] that isn’t identity-based becomes yesterday’s news.
5. NAC’s rise in importance brings back “risk management.”
6. While network identity management gets hot, application identity management goes mainstream.
7. Federated identity will enter the very beginning of mainstream adoption.
8. An acquisition will occur in the “user-centric” identity space.
9. The enterprise will begin exploring how to use CardSpace in enterprise deployments.
10. Compliance will remain the primary drive of Fortune 1000 identity deployments.
Nothing very controversial there.
One interesting prediction, as reported by the BBC, comes from Console Partner’s Kathy Johnson who believes that online retailers (think Amazon) will be taking reputation management and melding it with personalization, so you’ll be able to trust the recommendations that the retailer sends you. I’m not sure that “reputation management” will be developed enough by the end of 2007 for this to occur – but that won’t stop retailers from announcing it.
James McGovern, self-styled “industry thought leader”, prognosticates that “You may see a spree of acquisitions of startup companies that will couple role modeling and entitlements into a larger identity story.” Now that could happen, but as I said last June, the role-mining/role-creation sector of the industry is still searching for what everyone can agree is the best way to create and manage roles and, until they do, I don’t think it’s going to be prudent for any major player to try to co-opt one method through acquisition. We’ll see how that plays out.
Come back next issue and I’ll let you know what I think the new year will hold.
