May 5th, 2006
The top 10 most important people in Identity
The topic of the “10 most important people� in the identity space came up the other day, and it got me to thinking. Accordingly, I put together my list:
1. Jamie Lewis, CEO, Burton Group: Jamie is always at the top of his game; staying on top of identity trends. In addition, he and Craig Burton wrote the original whitepaper outlining the concept of a “meta-directory” - which essentially gave birth to the identity industry.
2. Kim Cameron, Architect for Identity, Microsoft: Besides building a meta-directory that Microsoft bought (now Active Directory), Kim started the “Laws of Identity” conversation that has resulted in InfoCards in Vista, and multiple conversations around “user-centric” identity.
3. Sara Gates, VP of Identity, Sun Microsystems: I’m pinpointing Sara, but this is really aimed at the entire Waveset team (which was acquired by Sun). That acquisition (and the people that came with it) was a turning point in Sun’s identity management business.
4. Michael Barrett, ex-President of The Liberty Alliance: Michael shepherded Liberty through its early years and represents all of that early, hard work that came out of Liberty and directly contributed to SAML2.0 - which became a point of convergence that accelerated all federated identity initiatives.
5. OASIS, standards body: Alright, so its not really a person, but when a standard comes out of OASIS (be it WS-Security or SAML) it gets traction, and identity would not be where it is today without them.
6. Mike Beach, Boeing: Mike was one of the earliest adopters of SAML, but that’s not why Mike is on this list. Mike is here to represent all of the engineers working inside of the enterprise that slave away day after day trying to make all of this identity “stuff” work.
7. Regulators and Legislators: Again, not a single person, but a group of people. Whether its the FFIEC (with their guidance for online authentication in a banking or brokerage context), or Congress (with the requirements of SOX and GLB), these folks drive identity technology forward, even if unknowingly.
8. The “little guys”: By “little guys,” I mean all of the smaller companies and developers that are out there innovating in one way or another. This list is long (and this is not inclusive): Sxip, Johannes Ernst, A10, Identity Engines, Trusted Network Technologies, Applied Identity, InfoExpress, Prodigen….it goes on and on.
9. The Kid in Nebraska: He’s probably 17 or 18, and he doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going to come up with the identity *application* that the entire world adopts.
10. The Readers of Digital ID World: Okay, this is as much a “thank you” as anything. We’ve been doing this since 2002, and without our readers (vendors, enterprises and individuals) we wouldn’t know anything.
That’s my Top 10 Most Important Pepole in Identity. So tell me, who did I miss?
