On a flight between Seattle and Tokyo. I've just put down The Big Switch , and decided it's time to write about cloud computing and how identity management is going to play a key role for the success of the new paradigm. As you go though this post, please remember that (as always) you are reading my personal opinions/views and not a press release from my employer :-) Cloud Computing: a nanointroduction The word "Cloud" is well on its way to be one of the most hyped & overloaded term in the recent history of IT: just enter "Cloud Computing" in your search engine of choice and be prepared to navigate a huge result set. A good way of ramping up on the topic would be to read the recent Forrester report " Is Cloud Computing Ready for the Enterprise? "; or, if you are less technical, you can start by reading the aforementioned The Big Switch (as long as you read those *** grano salis , without ever turning off your critical thinking module). For the purpose of understanding this post, I'll give you here my usual oversimplified stance: Cloud Computing is mainly a new deployment model. Let's say you are the solution architect of an enterprise, and you are in the process of setting up a new capability for your company. As usual, the two big alternatives are build the solution yourself, buy it as a service if available or all the intermediate approaches which combine the two. If you decide to build even just a little piece of the solution, you are implicitly stepping up for running Read More...