I've written in the past in this space about the dizzying array that is the identity protocol universe. To review briefly, there are what I would characterize (surely to calls of protest) as four main players: SAML, CardSpace (representative of WS-Federation and WS-Trust), the Liberty Alliance, and OpenID. We awaken today to a new organization that is aiming to drive "harmonization and interoperability" between these protocols (and other burgeoning identity projects): Project Concordia.
Of note with Project Concordia is that, though it is being organized (essentially) by the Liberty Alliance, it appears that, for the first time, Microsoft will be an active participant in an "organization" focused on identity protocol interoperability. Let me be perfectly clear about this: Microsoft has been making gargantuan steps around open-ness and interoperability in the identity sphere -- working with the community, submitting WS-Federation to OASIS, and providing open source avenues into CardSpace -- but this is the first time that Microsoft will actually be part of an "organization" working on these problems.
Will Project Concordia succeed? We'll see. Long-participating members of the identity community have seen more than their fair share of groups working on identity come and go. But this is a promising development.
The bigger picture here is simple: the "identity world" is fast approaching a "big bang" moment -- a point in time where we see identity infrastructure cross the enterprise and end-user boundaries; opening up new markets, new companies and new leaders. At the end of the day, *all* of identity up to this point has been about building infrastructure, and what *everyone* in identity really wants to accomplish is to move past infrastructure and into applications.
---Eric Norlin
