In the spirit of being candid here are my points:

· Consolidation occurs typically when in a that market cannot bear room for diversity, and in most cases this obeys to market maturity and or simple supply/demand rules. I will attribute the consolidation trend we are seeing as being expedited or accelerated due to the economic conditions - the supply/demand side (note that even the analyst communities that focus on identity are consolidating)

· But in my mind, this was bound to happen over time due to maturity, much like what happen with SAML 2.0 in the pre-recession days (converging all the different identity federation variants). At some point in time, the market reaches a maturity point in which there is no real value in having parallel standards to solve a common business problem, particularly if the business problem is considered business critical.

· My take is that we will see this trend in “SSO” take place, and then we will see new work streams spawning (authorization, attributes, privacy), some will not be technical (legal and policy frameworks) in a diverse ecosystem. More so as the economy recovers (and demand increases again).

My 2 cents.

Frank Villavicencio

Executive Vice President

Identropy, Inc

frank@identropy.com | (m) 646.229.3031 | http://www.identropy.com/blog

From: community-bounces@kantarainitiative.org [mailto:community-bounces@kantarainitiative.org] On Behalf Of Brett McDowell
Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 10:28 AM
To: community@kantarainitiative.org
Subject: [Kantara - Community] An observation: SSO's are consolidating and/or collaborating more

This email notice prompted me to share an observation with this community list.

CEN and CENELEC are essentially consolidating.  FSTC & BITS have essentially consolidated (or are somewhere along in the process).  Liberty Alliance & Concordia Project are consolidating into Kantara Initiative.  Electronic Authentication Partnership & Raddichio consolidated with Liberty Alliance before that.  OpenID Foundation & Information Card Foundation seem to be consolidating their trust framework activities into the OIF/OIE project/organization.  OASIS is more directly involved with various "non-accredited industry consortia" than I've ever seen before.  ISOC is investing time and dollars into Kantara Initiative and W3C (among others no doubt).  There are probably other moves like this in the identity, security, and privacy space that I'm forgetting to mention or haven't actually stumbled upon yet.

For discussion: why is this happening, and is it a good thing for standards development and/or adoption?

It's no secret that standards setting organizations are feeling the impact of the economic downturn and consolidation is one of several options each group faces.  Many of you subscribed to this mailing list are pretty close to several of these consolidation/cooperation projects.  I hoping some of you will share your personal observations about how this strategy is working and where you think this is all headed -- is this trend going to reverse or continue?

-- Brett

Begin forwarded message:

From: Penny Sarah [mailto:spenny@cencenelec.eu]
Sent: 11 February 2010 18:03
To: Coop_all; CGF_Email List
Subject: CEN and CENELEC new email addresses

Dear Madam,

Dear Sir,

The close collaboration between CEN and CENELEC, which was consolidated by the creation of a common CEN-CENELEC Management Centre (CCMC) at the beginning of this year, is now further reflected in our new e-mail address: flastname@cencenelec.eu.

For example, if you wish to contact CCMC Communication Unit Manager, Elisabeth Brodthagen use ebrodthagen@cencenelec.eu

Please make a note of our new email addresses and amend your contact lists accordingly.

In attachment you will find the organization chart of the CEN-CENELEC Management Centre as well as a telephone and e-mail directory of all CCMC staff.

Our postal address is:

CEN-CENELEC Management Centre
Avenue Marnix 17

B-1000 Brussels

We would appreciate if you could distribute this email in your organisation.

Should you have any enquiries, please send an e-mail to communication@cencenelec.eu.

Best regards,

Sarah PENNY
Director – External Relations