Identity management is an app

I see Mr. Bauhaus has picked up IDM within Sun:

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/bios/bios-bauhaus.html [1]

That is good for the partners, but demonstrates that Sun is playing a revenue game and not a disrupter advantage plan. The majority of the IDM vendors are still involved in a territory battle over who can generate the largest accounts complete with as many users as possible. The problem is that there is not much room left in the corporate accounts. I remember selling the iPlanet Web Server-Application Server-Directory Server solution, which turned in to the Java Web Services Reference Architecture for Sun ONE Application Server 7. This was the time for IDM solutions to be bundled as enterprise-wide solutions. But now the market has changed. We are truly entering the market for distributed apps. These apps will be running on a distributed platform. How many times do I need to tell PJ Murray that this means an app server? I love ya PJ, if you are the guy from Cape Clear ancestory, you believed in the Sun app server when no one else did, but don't let those early stumbles force you to run from Java.

IDM is an app. IDM is a Java platform requirement with JAAS and JNDI. IDM is no longer just about LDAP. IDM is no longer about flat-file structures, as WebLogic was able to do for years, and may still do. Where are ya Rich, or are you to busy writing for the Aquarium to let me know. Has anyone noticed the issues that Glassfish is on these days, its pretty comprehensive. As JEMS gets built to do what BEA could not do around WL, Glassfish is slowly gobbling up JEE5. Not that JBoss won't be there, but Sun's app platform group is making a strong case for future deployments. They also have Open SSO, but its tough to tell what the relationship is with Glassfish. There architecture released last year is on a web server!?

https://www.dev.java.net/files/documents/3676/19701/architecture.pdf [2]

Read to page 12-21 of the document, or page 16-25 of the .pdf to see their architecture. This is an oversight that we apps are .html docs only, potentially with some XML. Not once is the word Java written. It may be time to put some PMs and PMMs on this, Mark. Or at least introduce the Glassfish team to Open SSO.

"Everytime I touch the paper, its murder I wrote. I got that flow for the street, stay ahead of the times, stay behind the beat." (DP [3])

Write the infrastructure around your app server, write your apps on an app server. Its that simple, consultants of the world. If you're doing anything else, you are locking in to a Microsoft port after cost-benefit of lock-in preferences are determined. Sun is writing to a web server because of long-standing prejudices that have almost been washed away with Glassfish. But I wish Open SSO well in their pursuit of the web tier, while we take the Enterprise Java tier...