"But teacher, I can not remember my password!"

One of the best things about winter in Wisconsin is the concept that when winter comes there is always the chance that we will get a "snow day" Winter 2011 hasn't disappointed with the 14" of snow and the 10-15 foot snow drifts.

With the Internet at my house down, the TV cable going off an on all day, a pot of home made chili in the crock pot, this past Wednesday gave me the opportunity to do something that I don't do too often. Reflect on the past and prognosticate on the future.

I went into my man cave, with all the pretty blue and green blinking lights, the hum of 1's and 0's moving around. And with the crystal ball, standard issue to any certified computer/network engineer, I began to gaze deeply into the future.

With a few moan and groans, and some chants to the computer gods, ("Oh spirit of IPv6, spirit of IPX, spirit of Virtualization and The Cloud, and spirit of IDE drives and AT keyboards, and all the others, lend me your wisdom") Okay, so I am a little over the top here. :)

I began to think where we have been, at least in particular to where I work now. We have gotten to the point where all of our network users have their own user name and password. They no longer "share" a common user name. And even at that, we still have issue with 1 user name and password.

So, where are we headed? It is pretty obvious to anyone in the technology field....TO THE CLOUD.

The first hurdle or obstacle to overcome is understand what "The Cloud" really means. After pondering for a good long time on this I realize that "the Cloud" is probably the most fitting name. Why, because no two clouds are the same, they are constantly changing, and predicting them is like being a Meteorologist where you can be wrong over 1/2 the time and still have a job. :)

But even saying all of that, there are still some truths that will remain. One of those truths is that no matter what the Cloud looks like, users will still need to access resources and stuff that are particular to them and their job function. These users need to be identified, in some fashion, to be able to gain access to these resources. In other words, no matter what the cloud is for you, there will still be some sort of password/authentication method.

Getting back to our school and what many other schools are talking about, text books and other resources ONLINE. Even now when we don't have many textbook, we still see the subscription of different resources popping up where users must have a user name and password to gain access.

Now, jump ahead 3-5-10 years when ALL of the student resources are online. Each teacher has a textbook or a series of online subscription resources that students must have access. How will they gain access?

Right now, each student must create for themselves a unique user name and password for each resource. And let's say, for the average high school student, each teacher has 2-4 online resources. That would create 10-20 different resources that students will have to create a user name and password. 10-20 different passwords with different criteria, with different expiration dates.

ICK ICK ICK!

"But teacher, I can not remember my password!" If you think this is a big deal now with ONE user name and password that your technology department has control over, what happens when you or your student/employees have dozens of user names and password that your tech department has NO control or influence over?

So...what is the answer, what is the fix? USER FEDERATION! Why not use and leverage what you already have in a directory, eDirectory in our case, or Active Directory, Open Directory, to maintain a single source of authentication. More importantly, instead of having to create ALL OF THESE ACCOUNT, there is a single source that will interface with these Cloud resources. And actually, instead of housing accounts on the Cloud system, you really only carve out a personal space where your users are truly YOUR users and the directory information is NOT contained in services such as Google, Yahoo, Accelerated Reader, or any of the online resources. There is NOTHING for these companies to sell or to be hacked by someone because the directory information is ONLY on your system. The Cloud simply uses your own directory as an authentication portal!

Now, your users have access to ALL the resources they want/need without being bothered by having to remember ALL OF THOSE PASSWORDS. Along with that, you, as a technology person, feel safe that your user information has not left your sphere of control, it is safe in your environment.

So, as we look forward to the future of "Going to the Cloud" think about how you are going to manage all of your users.

The userID is KEY in all of this! User federation along with some of the other cool sync products are going to either make or break your environment as you move to The Cloud!

I am so looking forward to the next snow day when I can dust off my crystal ball, go into the cone of knowledge, and be enlightened. Thank goodness I didn't have any of the Apple Kool-Aid! :)