Monday, August 25, 2008

User-centric vs. Enterprise-centric Identity

In Dave Kearns' newsletter today (you may need to click the "Proceed directly ..." link in the upper right) he began a discussion on differences between User-centric and Enterprise-centric Identity. Here's his summary:

"And there you have it. Enterprise-centric identity management is really all about tying together all the activities and attributes of a single entity into a readily accessible (and reportable and auditable) form. User-centric identity is about keeping various parts of your online life totally separated so that they aren’t accessible and no report can be drawn."

I've been wondering if the model we're building (see diagram in previous post) applies to both, and I think it does. But of course I'd like to hear your views.

I think the lower layers (an Entity with multiple Contexts) are user-centric. Within a Context, I think Enterprise-centric concerns are addressed. Are there any types of service providers that do not have Enterprise-centric concerns? Any service provider that keeps any records about its users is effectively managing Digital Personas. I think.

1 comment:

Radovan Semancik said...

I think you are right.

And I think that Kim is not entirely precise. He is maybe right about the goals, but not the methods. And I think that there is no principal difference between "enterprise" and "user-centric" identity.