OpenID in open and closed environments
Electronic calendars had been around for a decade before the subject of interconnectivity between different calendar applications became an idea that could attract capital. Within organisations calendar interoperability is generally not a problem as everybody uses the same application. Single sign-on is another area where life is easier inside the firewall with multiple SSO solutions available to companies. OpenID, a decentralised open specification identity provision solution, may be about to make SSO services, and more, available on the open internet.
With OpenID, you choose whom to entrust with your identity. You can
place your trust in the big internet players like Verisign, Yahoo or AOL.
Or you can opt for several non-commercial sites setting up OpenID
servers (such as MyOpenID). I wouldn't be surprised if governments start offering identity
services based on OpenID at a point not too far into the future. For
the truly paranoid the solution is to
become their own identity provider by setting up their own OpenID
server. A neat thing about OpenID is that it does not mandate the
authentication method so if fingerprinting or mobile phone two factor authentication is your thing,
OpenID will work with it.
Besides the convenience of single sign-on across multiple websites, OpenID holds a promise to provide further identity services. When setting up a user account on a new website, OpenID offers a nifty short-cut workflow. With time I would like to see OpenID develop standards to store extended profile information such as click data and social network connections.
Consider the social networking aspect. As more and more services incorporate social network functionality, setting up a user account on a new service becomes more than just choosing a username and a password: With every new site you have to link to the same people before the site becomes useful. Unless your social network can be stored as part of your identity with the OpenID identity provider and mapped onto a new site. If your buddy list is the centre of the universe, part of your identity ("you are who you know"), why should it be replicated in so many places?
While large corporations got a head start on single sign-on compared to the open internet, OpenID closes the circle and puts SSO within reach for all organisations (it's free). The OpenID specification also works inside the firewall which should please those organisations eager to escape vendor lock-in in favour of open standards.
(Fingerprint graphic by Markus Sowada.)
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