Oracle announced it has acquired Oblix in a deal where terms were not announced. "This acquisition will allow Oracle to offer customers a complete solution for securely managing identities; one that is even more flexible, scalable, and integrated and helps customers lower the cost of regulatory compliance," said Thomas Kurian, senior vice president, Oracle Server Technologies.

Computer Associates acquired software from InfoSec that identifies and removes obsolete or unused account information in a mainframe environment. CA has been reselling the software as eTrust Cleanup for over a year.

In our opinion this move indicates that the higher profile CA has been putting on IdM these days is real, and that they want their ultimate offering to be very complete.

BMC has bought OpenNetwork continuing its identity management acquisitions. BMC had fallen behind in identity and was facing a decision on whether to drop out or retrench. With the acquisition of Calendra and now OpenNetwork, they are making it clear they want to get back in and be competitive again.

We've written often about the interesting identity approaches Groove Networks has taken, and speculated as far back as February 2003 that Microsoft might be looking at an eventual acquisition of Groove. We may be safely called premature in that speculation, but Microsoft has finally made it official. They are acquiring Groove Networks, and expect the deal to close by June. Groove founder and Lotus Notes Inventor Ray Ozzie, will become one of Microsoft's three CTOs, reporting directly to Bill gates.

In the usual response to an acquisition like this, the question immediately arises about how well the acquiring company will be able to integrate the acquired product into their suite. Microsoft's history says they will do a very good job on about their third release, allowing the naysayers a decent interval to appear right before they are seen as wrong again.

Digital Evolution has renamed itself SOA Software to better represent its mission of supplying products and services to help enterprises build and manage Service Oriented Architectures. They then acquired ThoughtDigital to show they mean it. The company previously acquired Flamenco Networks.

SAML 2.0 becomes a standard, and now The Liberty Alliance adds SAML 2.0 support to its ID-WSF web services federation specifications.

OASIS has formally approved the SAML 2.0 standard. SAML 2.0 marks a significant convergence of the first round of federated authentication by incorporating the Liberty Alliance ID-FF functionality, and creating the capability for interoperable federated sign-on along with enhanced attribute exchange functionality.

"SAML v2.0 builds on the success of SAML v1.1 by providing a full-featured foundation for identity federation on the Internet," explained Prateek Mishra of Principal Identity, co-chair of the OASIS Security Services Technical Committee. "Some of its features fill in important 'gaps' observed in practical deployments: for example, the attribute profiles and metadata specification simplify agreement between businesses participating in a federation. Other features such as encryption, pseudonyms and user consent enable confidentiality and privacy of information about users."

The FIPS 201 standard bounced on its first attempt last fall, but now it has been approved as a standard. This standard, coupled with President Bush's Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD) 12 should let smart card technology move past some of the "one of a kind" issues that have slowed their progress. It's all about interoperable, integrated identity.