The general session presentation by a guy from GM is in process. After spending too long telling us that GM is a big, honking company, he’s talking about “identity as a business issue.” But so far he’s pointed to two basic situations where identity management would help: First, consolidating information about customers so that the dealer has access to the same information as the marketing department, etc.; Second, consolidating the six different identities (= email addresses?) the speaker has at GM.

This type of consolidation of customer information is the standard benefit of application integration that’s been touted for years. Certainly it’s valuable and important (and just a little bit scary), but it’s not what I think of as central the issues of digital IDs: the creation of a permanent, traceable link from Web presence to the real world body sitting in front of the monitor, and vice versa. Yeah, of course we want to consolidate our customer information. But do we want a digital ID across companies? Who manages it? Who controls it and the record that it accretes? That’s what I’m here to learn about. Maybe he’ll get to it…

Nah, now he’s telling us why automating processes over the Web saves GM yada yada bucks. Presumably his standard presentation.

Now he’s getting to it! Three major digital ID issues.

1. Single sign-on is no longer GM’s focus. Other factors have taken precedence at GM, including security and privacy. GM feels it needs a more comprehensive approach, rather than focusing on single sign-on by itself.

2. They’ve joined the Liberty Alliance, which is the everyone-but-Microsoft response to Redmond’s attempt to own digital ID management. But he just said that the Liberty Alliance has nothing to do with countering Microsoft. (Bushwa! As if there’s anything wrong with countering Microsoft on this!)

Hmm, I don’t know what the third thing was.

Take-away: GM is doing lots of interesting things webbing people together. The question of digital ID for them comes down to how they can consolidate information about the variegated interactions each customer and employee has.

If I got this wrong, other bloggers will get it right. And you’ll let me know about it I’m sure.

Categories: Uncategorized dw