Saturday, March 13, 2010
Does Microsoft truly want Information Cards to be successful...
I am a big fan of Information Cards and believe there are a few challenges that Microsoft needs to address in order for it to be truly ready for primetime...
The general industry trend towards mobile devices means that identity selectors need to be made available for Apple iPhone, Google Droid and the Blackberry platform if identity ever seeks to become mobile. Microsoft has no committed roadmap to develop identity selectors for other than traditional Windows platforms.
Another trend I have observed is that Microsoft field sales teams do a great job of selling other products, but they generally aren't visiting large enterprises and briefing them on their strategy around identity. I wonder if they expect the enterprise architecture community who trends towards blissful ignorance when it comes to security to stumble upon the identity conversation and just get it without any hand holding.
Let's be clear, enterprises and their employees need to be spoonfed. Without Microsoft field staff showing up with chock-a-block eye candy PowerPoint spelling out the value proposition of identity to all those non-technical IT employees, adoption will continue to struggle.
More importantly, as enterprises shift towards buying more software, the guys in procurement could benefit from having a few contract clauses they could insert into agreements with their strategic vendors. Right now, no one knows to even ask the question.
Has Microsoft acknowledged that many enterprise applications are built on Java and that many of the J2EE containers dont support it out of the box. Wouldn't it be great if Microsoft encouraged Oracle to include Information Card support in BEA Weblogic Portal as a starting point? Surely, Microsoft doesn't expect enterprises who use Java to go hunting for open source libraries and will at least acknowledge the importance of vendor support...
| | View blog reactionsThe general industry trend towards mobile devices means that identity selectors need to be made available for Apple iPhone, Google Droid and the Blackberry platform if identity ever seeks to become mobile. Microsoft has no committed roadmap to develop identity selectors for other than traditional Windows platforms.
Another trend I have observed is that Microsoft field sales teams do a great job of selling other products, but they generally aren't visiting large enterprises and briefing them on their strategy around identity. I wonder if they expect the enterprise architecture community who trends towards blissful ignorance when it comes to security to stumble upon the identity conversation and just get it without any hand holding.
Let's be clear, enterprises and their employees need to be spoonfed. Without Microsoft field staff showing up with chock-a-block eye candy PowerPoint spelling out the value proposition of identity to all those non-technical IT employees, adoption will continue to struggle.
More importantly, as enterprises shift towards buying more software, the guys in procurement could benefit from having a few contract clauses they could insert into agreements with their strategic vendors. Right now, no one knows to even ask the question.
Has Microsoft acknowledged that many enterprise applications are built on Java and that many of the J2EE containers dont support it out of the box. Wouldn't it be great if Microsoft encouraged Oracle to include Information Card support in BEA Weblogic Portal as a starting point? Surely, Microsoft doesn't expect enterprises who use Java to go hunting for open source libraries and will at least acknowledge the importance of vendor support...
