OpenID and Identity Services

In response to my previous blog post about identity services, I received the following question from Billy: “isn’t this what OpenID aims to do? If not, how not?” OpenID can be a small (but key) part of the identity services story. The main problem that OpenID tries to solve is one that most people who

We’re Listening, Pamela. We’re Listening

The ever thought-provoking Pamela Dingle has issued a challenge to Enterprise Application vendors. In it, she puts forth the idea that technology and market demand has reached the point where those in the business of building and selling enterprise applications should (must?) figure out how to externalize authentication. But she also points out what has

OAS4OS Ships Today. Unix Admins Rejoice!

Intrigued? The guys over in our Directory Services group (part of Oracle Identity Management) have just come out with a new offering which has a doozy of an acronym, even by Oracle standards. OAS4OS stands for Oracle Authentication Services for Operating Systems, software that greatly simplifies the authentication and account management process of Unix and

Virtual Directories + Provisioning = No more Metadirectory

There has been an interesting discussion going on regarding the fate of metadirectory technology. Dave Kearns talked about it in his newsletter recently (see: Is the metadirectory dead). In it, he quoted Jackson Shaw, who brought it up as context to HP’s recent retrenchment: “Let’s be honest. The meta-directory is dead. Approaches that look like

The Forrester Wave on IAM: Oracle a Clear Leader

It’s always a good thing when your work get recognized. Forrester Research has just published a new Forrester Wave ™ Report focused on Identity and Access Management products.  In this report, Oracle emerges as a clear market leader with a solid portfolio of integrated products and a “compelling, aggressive strategy” with application-centric identity. Forrester gives

The Latest Wave of IdM Acquisitions

It’s been a while since I blogged. Not that there aren’t a wealth of topics to talk about, but because work here at Oracle has been keeping me so busy. The time right around a major product release (see my recent post about the release of OIM 9.1) is always busiest for me, because I

Higgins 1.0 Released

The Eclipse Foundation today announced the 1.0 release of Higgins, the first real software framework that enables developers to integrate user-centric identity technologies and protocols into their applications. It’s multi-protocol and platform-agnostic architecture is key in making the process of integrating identity into their applications attractive to developers of web applications. It’s a big achievement,

Big News for OpenID

In further evidence that OpenID is about to go mainstream in a big way, the big players in the consumer identity space – Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Verisign (along with IBM) – have joined the OpenID foundation, and are even going to have representatives on the board of directors. Tireless OpenID advocate (and board member)

Announcing Oracle Identity Manager 9.1

The latest release of Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle’s best-in-class user provisioning and administration solution, has finally hit the shelves (so to speak). Release 9.1 has been eagerly anticipated for a while now, and brings with it a host of new features and usability improvements. Below are some of the highlights of the release (You can

Looking Forward to 2008

This is the time of year when everyone rolls out their start-of-the-year predictions. You can see a couple of those here and here. I especially loved Anshu Sharma’s take on this popular beginning-of-the-year routine. Predictions are risky business, especially in the slightly schizophrenic world of IdM. On the one hand, things tend to move way