Mike Beach of Boeing is the earliest of early adopters. I first heard him tell his "federation" story (the now legendary example of Southwest pilots being federated into Boeing maintenance manuals) at Burton's Catalyst show some years back. Mike is the guy that made SAML (as a feature) show up in the Oblix product set. Mike is the guy that cut through all of early brush and hardwoods to clear a field. Mike is the guy that showed others that federation *could* be done.
Mike Beach was the first wave of federation.
Well, if Mike was the first wave, I'm guessing he's also a good indicator of the second wave as well. It seems that Mike solved some snags, chose Ping Identity (full disclosure: I was Ping's VP of Marketing from Oct 2002 until July 2005), and decided to kick things off.
Boeing's moving ahead with deploying dozens of federation partners. Mike proclaims federation "the way business will get done on the internet." This is definitely federation's second wave.
So, here's what we know:
The first wave lasted three years (2002-2005) and really served as proof of concept.
The second wave will most likely last a similar period (with slight compression - 2006-2008/9) and will serve as the "crossing the chasm" inflection point.
Extrapolating, we'll finally "accomplish" federation for the mass of enterprises in the 2009-2011 timeframe.
That's a pretty good run for what started as browser-based single sign on between enterprises ;-)
Posted by ejnorlin at May 11, 2006 04:01 AM