Kantara Initiative reshapes global identity landscape

Members of the global identity and Internet communities today announced the launch of Kantara Initiative, a new global organization formed to bridge enterprise, Web 2.0 and Web-based identity initiatives.

The initiative has been founded by the Concordia Project, Data Portability Project, Information Card Foundation, Internet Society, Liberty Alliance, OpenLiberty.org and XDI.org to collaborate on eliminating the “walled gardens” that exist in the global identity sector.

With zero barriers to participation and founding principles based on transparency, inclusion, empowerment, innovation, collaboration and openness, members of the community are leveraging the successes and experiences of each other to drive holistic, interoperable and trusted identity solutions into the global marketplace.

The Kantara Initiative has been established based on a bicameral governance model where the Board of Trustees and Leadership Council work hand-in-hand as peers in steering the direction of the organization. With today’s news, Roger Sullivan, vice president Oracle Identity Management, has been elected president of the 2009 Kantara Initiative Board of Trustees and J. Trent Adams, outreach specialist, trust & identity, Internet Society, has been elected chair of the Leadership Council.

Initial Board of Trustee members include AOL, BT, CA, Intel, Internet Society, Fidelity Investments, Novell, NRI, NTT, Oracle, PayPal and Sun Microsystems. Representatives from Intel and the New Zealand government have Leadership Council seats on the Board of Trustees.

According to Bob Blakley, principal analyst, The Burton Group, “The identity product and service market grows more complex every month, and as the market gets more moving parts, there are more and more requirements for all those parts to work together. The parts aren’t going to work together unless the part makers work together – and that’s why today’s announcement is important. The Kantara Initiative is helping to bridge identity initiatives and organizations, which can help set the stage for better collaboration in the global identity sector.”

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