User-centric identity is all about the user, the self-empowered individual, isn't it? What do we need enterprises for?

Unfortunately this sentiment is a bit more common among user-centric identity advocates than I am comfortable with. Sometimes enterprises are even portrayed as the sworn enemies of user-centric identity. Fortunately, I don't believe that is even remotely true. It would also be a rather self-defeating thought: if it was true, do we all recognize that user-centric identity would be doomed?

[It all boils down to the distribution channel. You and I and everybody depend on others to get technology into our hands, and those others are, for the most part, "enterprises". I depend on Apple for the laptop I'm writing this on. A big CableCo for the internet connectivity I'm going to use to upload this post. Even the blog hosting software that I'm using, which is open-source, depends on a company to host the files (which in turn depends on even larger companies to get servers and connectivity from). If all big companies similarly hated technology X, it would be certain that the technology would never reach you and me, because there is no scalable distribution path from you to me without the consent of big companies. The mechanisms by which the distribution path would be blocked might vary, but the result would be the same.]

On the other hand: I do agree with the sentiment that user-centric identity is a threat to some established companies, just like blogging has been a threat to some media companies, like so many other technologies before that. Those companies whose business model is challenged by user-centric identity will clearly try to impede its growth. But crucially, for the exact same reason (and some others) it is a boon to other companies, even large enterprises: user-centric identity represents a very potent competitive weapon to them against the very companies that wish to impede it. It is those enterprises whose support is crucial for the large-scale success of user-centric identity.

We need those enterprises as allies. And going into 2008, I strongly believe we need to package user-centric identity technologies in a manner that allows them to use those technologies as a competitive weapon for their own purposes. Only by doing this do we get a distribution channel for user-centric identity that is large and strong enough to actually get out the technology to enough people to matter.

Exhibit A has happened already: AOL, for example, has recognized that by embracing OpenID it gains a weapon in its competitive fight against the other big web properties. I'm sure that its user-centricity was not the top consideration on top of their minds when they decided to make it available to all of their user — Google is much more likely — but nevertheless that vector created the largest OpenID deployment to date. Wordpress.com is another example.

So here is the challenge for all of us: can we create similar circumstances in all kinds of markets, where enterprises adopt user-centric identity technologies for whatever purposes of their own, thereby creating a distribution channel that gets those empowering tools to the individual who will use them as they see fit, which was the goal from the beginning?

I think there is. Let's do it.