Clayton Donley's Blog

I was reading this posting from my friend and colleague, Phil Hunt, in which he talks about the ongoing discussion between Dave Kearns and Kim Cameron about the death of meta-directories.

Not only is he correct in pointing out that Kim's definition of Meta 2.0 is exactly what virtual directory has been since 1.0, but it's interesting to see that some virtual directory vendors continue to push something that looks very much like meta-directory 1.0.

This something is persistent cache and is a code word for a locally stored meta-verse, which is basically contains a roll-up of all the remote data. I can assure you that Kim Cameron knows exactly what a meta-verse is...he probably invented it at Zoom-it.

Regardless of whether you call it a meta-verse or a persistent cache, the same mechanics apply. You're in the business of synchronizing data between repositories, with all he problems that arise from that.

Glad Microsoft now realizes that virtual directory (or as they call it, meta-direcory 2.0) is the way to go. Wish we could all agree on some standard terminology for these kinds of things, though. It would really help the customers.

Technorati Tags: meta-directory, virtual directory

For those of you that don't like reading press releases and wonder what all he buzz is about our recently announced Service Oriented Security offerings, Tony Baer from OnStrategies has a great roll-up here.

Nishant Kaushik, one of our key architects, does a fantastic job of boiling down this announcement as follows:

SOS covers the four stages of an application lifecycle - development, deployment, administration and governance. With SOS, organizations can now centralize and externalize security solutions as part of a flexible security architecture. Recent identity related efforts like the Identity Governance Framework are also part of this architecture, providing the ability to deliver privacy-aware applications.

Certainly the key take-away for customers and those building everything from the next bank portal to the next Flickr is that you can get cohesive identity management as a service today, so you're better off crafting your value on top of these services rather than trying to do a better job with identity management fundamentals.

I'm in Seattle for my brother's wedding, so was unable to see Thomas' talk at RSA yesterday. I would love to get some email with first-hand accounts and feedback.

Technorati Tags: identity management, LDAP