This is a great discussion, and one I've heard a lot more often recently. I think the corporate world in general is finally starting to understand the strengths of IaaS (Identity as a Service). And just like it took a while for SaaS to really take off, as the consumer market starts building confidence in external identity management, IaaS will follow the SaaS success story.

It may be because I am looking at the industry from the technical side, that I don't see the technology behind identity management in general, being an issue. Instead, the management of relationships is the roadblock in my eyes. However, thanks to the general publics' reliance on social networks, it looks to me that the private sector will be the early adopter of IaaS. I especially see great potential in InfoCards and a potential explosion of usage when that really takes off.

The reason for the lag on the corporate side is and has been the IAM (Identity and Access Management) integration. It's simply too to complex and cumbersome to setup true federation between corporations and a growing mesh network of trust quickly becomes unmanageable.

That's why I myself see great potential in the myOneLogin federation services. And that's not because we make the management of the trust-networks manageable through web pages and fancy grids (although it's a great help), but because we provide a full set of web services and APIs for developers to use for integration with existing systems already in use. For a case in point (and shameless plug), take a look at the rich WS API for myOneLogin, and you'll see what I mean. A 10-minute guide to federation can be found here http://www.myonelogin.com/developer/docs_guide.ht...

Tomas Boman, Principal Architect myOneLogin