David Goodman

Three elephants, two jungles and a mouse

Last week's saw the long-awaited announcement by IBM and Novell of the Higgins project which is part of the open source Eclipse application development environment, favoured by both companies. Initiated at Harvard's Berkman Center, Higgins is the application developer's window on to the world of identity data and so, in a convoluted kind of way, is being seen as a competitor to Microsoft's much-discussed Infocard initiative, due out with the Vista release later this year. Infocard starts with the perspective of the user and a user interface and as a consequence seeks a so-called 'meta-system' to interact with or through. Conceptually this could or should be an open paradigm for interoperability. In practice, because Microsoft is ahead of the game, it's not - yet anyway. The Eclipse approach comes at the same problem - putting the control of identity into the hands of the individual - from a different, though not necessarily conflicting, perspective.

Through its use of adaptors, Higgins is touted as the meeting place for every standards-based protocol or format available to date and, through the jungle clearings on both sides of the argument, lurks both LDAP and WS-Security which IBM and Microsoft have worked on closely, and almost exclusively, for several years for the benefit of the rest of the industry in the face of repeated criticisms of isolationism and the like.

So are we faced with two competing camps for the next round in the progress of the ultimate solution for identity? Simple answer is that it's not the right question to ask and both sets of parties would (and have) applauded the other party's initiatives. Time will tell in what is reminiscent of the concept of 'fighting for peace'.

And the mouse? Higgins is named after the Tasmanian long-tailed mouse which reflects the Web 2.0 theory of the "long tail" of micro-markets that complement traditional industries. So to squeak.

• Posted by davidg on 06/03/2006.
• davidg's site