It was fairly big news a while back when HP decided to kill off its identity management efforts. And the immediate question from the analyst community was what HP would do to continue supporting those customers. As it turns out, the answer to that question is Novell.
Under an exclusive agreement, Novell will receive a license agreement for HP's identity technology, relevant intellectual property and source code. The goal is to help HP's identity customers migrate over to Novell for service and future purchases. On the other side, HP will resell Novell's identity technology.
The agreement seems to address all of the major items that we left hanging by HP's decision. Still, I find the whole thing to be a bit bittersweet. HP's identity folks were always intensely smart engineers that devoted a lot of time and effort to what is our current pile of identity standards. If nothing else, its a shame not to have them around in conversations anymore.
