* Identity management predictions from Sun's VP of Identity
Sun’s ebullient Vice President of Identity, Sara Gates, finally caught up with me recently and asked, pointedly, why I hadn’t gotten her predictions for the year in identity management. After apologizing abjectly for the lapse, I listened carefully to what she had to say.
As we’re now out of the first month of the year, this is more than likely the last thing we’ll say about predictions. After all, the predictions about consolidation in the industry have already come true.
Gates has four items in her fearless forecast for the year:
1) Audit capabilities will become the major driver for identity management solutions this year.
While many (including me) predict that regulatory compliance will be the driver, Gates goes one step further to note that it’s the auditing capabilities that make it possible to satisfy regulatory compliance. In addition, she adds that the ability to audit identity federation transactions will go a long way towards automating the setup of federation partnerships (what the Liberty Alliance calls “Circles of Trust”) because it helps solve the crucial question of responsibility when potential problems occur. She also thinks the spread of RFID technology will depend on the ability to audit when and where (and by whom) tags are tracked.
2) Virtual directories cease to be separate services and become a feature of standard directories.
This goes hand-in-hand with the prediction by OctetString’s Clayton Donnelly, who believes that virtual directories will gain importance this year, as well as the prediction we discussed last week by Abridean’s Greg O’Malley, who said “many characteristics of meta-directory products will become part of the basic LDAP directory.” I do think I see a trend here.
3) Wireless vendors will push the boundaries of identity management with innovative new uses for provisioning and federation.
I can’t disagree with this. I’m only bothered that I didn’t think of it since both Gates and I were at the CTIA Wireless event this fall and marveled at the services the wireless vendors were both proposing and implementing.
4) The next killer app for identity management: Google for identity.
All of this auditing will create huge amounts of identity data. All of the new services being proposed by traditional identity vendors, wireless vendors, social networking vendors – and lots of others too – is creating a vast storehouse of identity data that we’ll never be able to assimilate without useful search and correlation tools. This could be a boon – or it could be a privacy nightmare.
Well, Gates does seem to have compliance and auditing running as a thread through her predictions. If you want to know why, come back next issue.
