Identity Federation's Future in the Balance

Over the past few years, many enterprises have initiated identity federation projects as a low-cost solution for making transactions and interactions more fluid across domain boundaries.

Their experiences with identity federation show the technology to be a valuable, through partial, solution to their needs. While the promises of identity federation allow organizations to build trusted relationships between multiple corporations, partners and suppliers, the reality is that most organizations are just trying to enable single sign-on (SSO) for specific value chains.

Identity federation has been the subject of both hype and criticism. Organizations find that although identity federation can indeed reduce costs and improve security, its success falls short of visionaries' aspirations.

Successful identity federation implementations fall into one of three configurations:

• The central organization model
• The value chain model
• The industry exchange model

From a software engineer's perspective, identity federation consists of a group of protocols required to make sign-ons reusable. From the business side, federation enables unique business relationships among various partners.

Enterprise encounters with identity federation reveal the technology to be an important, though incomplete, answer to their needs. However, before federation technologies can become a basis for a ubiquitous Internet identity system, coordination requirements for setting up federated connections must be dramatically reduced.