You can read the 18+ blog postings covering all of the recent discussions about how dead or not-dead meta-directories really are.
Or, you can read Ian's post that summarizes this whole discussion and save those three hours to line-wait for your iPhone 3G.
As for his conclusions:
1. Use the right tool for the job - Sure. Hard to argue with that.
2. There's room for provisioning, meta-directory, virtual directories, and directories - Sure, all the tools are available, but if you look at most meta-directories, the trend is still to try to make them more like provisioning tools. Not sure why you wouldn't just pick a tool that's already where you want to be.
3. Go with a service oriented approach - Our strategy here is certainly to be more application centric vs. more system management vendors and I think that's shown well when it comes to tie-ins with SOA and serices in general.
4. Meta-directories aren't dead, they're evolving - I agree, but see them evolving more into provisioning tools than virtual directories. This is already happening. I like to think that meta-directories aren't dead in the same way Monty Python's black knight isn't dead, but the reality is that they're trying to get where we already are. :-)
