Today, Symantec announced support for OpenID and Windows CardSpace at the Demo 2007 conference. It is a key part of what Symantec calls their "Security 2.0" initiative.

Symantec is taking a user-centric approach, making the identity service protocol-independent. The service will interact with websites supported by different identity exchange protocols, such as CardSpace and OpenID.

This is great news for OpenID. Not having seen the product, I'm not sure how great news it is for CardSpace: the press release can be read to say that Symantec's Norton Identity Client will compete with CardSpace for the same place on users' PCs (maybe it isn't, but then I don't understand it. Anybody have any details who can fill me in?). This Norton Identity Client is going to compete with Sxipper for sure, and perhaps also with upcoming OpenID support in Firefox. It is good news for sure for the protocols underlying both OpenID and CardSpace (e.g. WS-Trust). These are interesting times ... another fight brewing for the user's desktop; I'm happy we have chosen not to compete there at NetMesh, but to work with everybody. (We do compete in what companies can do with these technologies to further their business goals.)

Well, after VeriSign, this is the second OpenID endorsement from a technology blue-chip company (in addition to the many upstarts that support OpenID today, with more coming on-line every day.)