Take yourself back a century or two. Imagine that your butler was reporting all of your activities – and I do mean all – to the local newspaper editor. How would you feel about your ‘downstairs’ staff after such a breakdown in trust?

While these are troubled times for much of the global economy, in the world of IT, things have rarely been better. The combination of mobile, social, cloud and the whole as-a-service movement is revitalizing the IT sector, generating a new wave of success and enthusiasm, even a mini hi-tech bubble. While US unemployment is over 9%, IT unemployment is less than 4 percent, resulting in talent wars and rising salaries. The nerds are winning, again.

Everyone who uses computers suffers from Identity Fatigue: the frustration that arises because every new product and service they access on the internet demands a new user ID and password. With all that is happening in the IT world – virtualization, consumerization, deperimiterization, mobilization – identity management is a growing problem.

In 2001, we coined the phrase, the Consumerization of Information Technology, to describe the radical reorientation of the IT industry. The growth of the computer business had always been rooted in big companies and large government organizations. But today, it is the consumer market that is the center of IT innovation and growth.