Last year’s predictions included this:
4. Collaboration applications will get in the identity game.
One of the areas that will suddenly find itself in the middle of the identity conversation will be collaboration applications — by that we mean blogs, feedreaders, wikis, etc. The new “social networking” applications will start to seriously go after the identity game in 2006.
Grade: 1.
Reasoning: I could argue that this prediction should be graded higher in light of the blogosphere’s adoption of identity protocols, but alas, my general sense is that collaboration applications (and those in the “web 2.0” world) are still largely seeing identity as somebody else’s problem.
I think that this year will see collaboration tools begin to adopt. It took a while for this to happen because OpenID was not there yet and none of the collaboration tool folks want to worry about which protocol will win they just want it to work. With my position on the ground in the Web2.0 market I have had conversations with small ecologies of companies who ‘get’ that their users are shared with other companies. The Office 2.0 crowd was very enthusiastic about the potential for OpenID to offer SSO to their ecology.
5. URL-based identity will gain some traction.
Yes, we’re following the URL-based identity work. Yes, we think its important. Yes, we think it will accomplish some interoperability tests in 2006. Yes, we think it will gain some traction with the alpha geek community — and stop just short of a critical mass. Watch for URL-based identity to create a deeper understanding of identity for a larger community.
Grade: 5.
Reasoning: OpenID, OSIS, Higgins, Cardspace, Sxip — the list goes on and on. The work happening in the URL-based identity space is now not only driven by the smaller players, but the larger ones (like Verisign) as well. URL-based identity made an *awful* lot of progress in 2006, but didn’t reach critical mass.
Yep. Lot so of good stuff happened this year. Congratulations to everyone on working hard together to make all this good stuff happen.
6. Identity comes to Search.
Call this one something that happens in an alpha state in 2006. Either Yahoo!, Microsoft or Google will either announce or release an early version of a search product that brings identity profiles to bear. Somebody get me Vint Cerf on the phone! 😉
Grade: 1.
Reasoning: Another one that I *wished* would’ve happened, but didn’t. While Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google all made some pushes into personalized search (close), no one truly launched identity-based search based on profiles (but no cigar).
Yes this certainly didn’t happen this year. I think that all will happen is market setting so it can maybe happen in 2008. With Doc’s work on VRM and the coming of several identity across the web aggregation tools (ones that you do like ClaimID and ones that happen to you like Wink, and Spock). The ground work is being laid for this to become more real.
10. The Divide between User-centric and Enterprise Identity management is the number one conversation in 2006.
Its something we’ve identified and focused on for some time — the two different conversations that are “user-centric” identity and “enterprise identity.” The historical gap between these two areas is now being addressed by serious folks in the identity game — and 2006 will see this be the most powerful conversation in the land.
Grade: 5.
Reasoning: I’d give us a “10” on this one if I could. User-centric identity dominated the discussion in nearly all identity circles in 2006.
We were the talk of the town this year. It was fun to have so many great conversations at so many event. Next year hopefully more of the legal folks will join in so we can get some of the governance right. Code 2.0 goes on and on about the coming identity layer and governance.
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