* News from Microsoft, Sun, plus other snippets from the show
Lots of things happened at last week’s Digital ID World conference which for the first time was put on by Phil Becker, Kathy Becker and Eric Norlin, with the help of IDG Event services. IDG did what they do best – logistics, while Phil and Norlin did what they do best – line up great speakers. And Kathy managed to keep it all together. Congratulations to all!
I did meet with a number of different vendors, spent time chatting with users and hopefully picked up the flavor and tenor of what everyone was talking about.
The biggest buzz came from Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise announcement to free up access to a whole slew of protocols – especially those that provide the underpinnings to its upcoming CardSpace identity system. I cover this in more detail in this week’s Windows Networking newsletter (available in a day or two – keep checking).
Once again, the world’s biggest floating identity discussion, the Internet Identity Workshop, met on the first day of DIDW to talk at length about various topics surrounding user-centric identity. It was right after the meeting where Mike Jones, Microsoft director of distributed systems customer strategy and evangelism, released the news about the Open Specification Promise, giving much praise to Microsoft Directory Architect (and user-centric identity thought leader) Kim Cameron for pushing through this important announcement.
There was another announcement, though, that caused more than one raised eyebrow. Sun put out a press release headlined: “Sun Is First To Market With Integrated Identity Auditing And User Provisioning System.” Hmm, auditing integrated with provisioning – is this something new? But I remembered the Catalyst Conference. From 2004. Right, two years ago. After that conference, I’d written “More vendors in the compliance game” about how Thor (now part of Oracle) and Oblix (also now part of Oracle) had announced updates to their provisioning systems that included the auditing needed for regulatory compliance. I also remembered an earlier newsletter that included details of Courion’s ComplianceCourier product, which is all about the auditing necessary for regulatory compliance. So, what was Sun’s announcement all about?
I did manage to grab a few moments with Sun Identity Product Line Manager Andy Land. After going around and around I realized that the “first” that PR dynamo Bob Wientzen was talking about (he wrote the press release) was that the auditing tools that were formerly part of Sun’s Identity Auditor product are now rolled into Sun’s Identity Manager provisioning line. That is, the products weren’t new, just the way they were bundled. Wientzen was chastened to hear about the brouhaha he created and now, at least, the real story has been told. Next time, though, there’s an even more curious announcement I want to bring to your attention.
