The end game for corporate identity architectures is an "identity bus" that off-the-shelf applications can plug into in order to authenticate users and provide access control, according to Microsoft. Stuart Kwan, director of program management for identity and access for Microsoft, used his keynote address at NetPro's Directory Access Conference (DEC) to say that work building identity platforms is far from over and to explore where it might end. Kwan said what is needed are "transformers," places where data contained within "claims" about a user can be into changed into different formats depending on an application's need. Kwan said the transformers would be able to handle such things as Kerberos, X.509 certificates and assertions based on SAML.

Read the complete article by John Fontana of Network World.