Great message, wrong audience

Pamela Dingle has some great suggestions about identity enabling applications that she directs at the application vendors. The problem is that this message really needs to get to those that recommend and especially approve IT application purchases. Application vendors will not, for the most part, make identity enablement a priority until their customers tell them it is part of the selection criteria. There are a few application vendors, like SAP, who actively participate in the standards process and support identity standards in their products. But for the most part this is not viewed as a real need by most application vendors.

Pamela thinks this is about to change:
No matter what technology rises or falls, flexibility in authentication methods will become a key differentiator in the next 5-10 years for Enterprise applications. Prior to this, the applications have pre-existed and SSO projects have attempted at great expense to integrate what is already there. I believe that in the next few years, the tables will turn. Cost of Enterprise Identity & Access Management integration will be factored into Enterprise Application business cases.

Perhaps. But I have been hearing this for the last 10 years and it hasn’t happened yet. Besides, even identity enablement becomes a key differentiator in 5-10 years, that’s about 4-9 years beyond the feature planning cycle for most application vendors.