With a commitment to promoting interoperability and enabling technologies, the OpenID Foundation has made a dedicated effort in 2011 to increase international participation and broaden the discussion on the latest use cases, technologies and policies within the global identity ecosystem.

Janrain talked about the evolution of OpenID and consumer use cases. With OpenID technologies now mainstream and serving as an enabling component within the application, identity takes a central role in powering and protecting the consumer experience.

The conference continues the momentum for launching OpenID Connect as a new standard that leverages the early learnings of OpenID, the identity ecosystem and how users want to participate. Standardizing and innovating around OpenID Connect will open up new use cases around attribute exchange which can further enhance the consumer experience by providing more access, control and trust.

The content and preparation for this event was exceptional and we thank the OpenID Foundation Japan for hosting the event and our colleagues at Google and Microsoft for their roles in sponsoring.

What’s the problem? There’s no question that user sign-in and registration helps drive increased personalization but sites don’t want to be in the business of managing passwords. Consumers reuse their passwords across sites. If one site’s security is breached the damages can be exponential. Surrender Gmail credentials that are tied to a Google Apps account and you have a real mess.

Google and Janrain have cooperated in launching tools for consumer-facing websites that enable users to login with their existing email credentials. The Google Identity Toolkit (GITkit) and the Janrain Login Helper enable any site to federate login while simplifying registration and providing a consistent user experience.

The Shift to Identity Providers

Google’s Eric Sachs does a great job of laying out Google’s rationale for helping sites get out of the password business. Eric has been the biggest long-time advocate for this shift and the reality is that large identity providers like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are better equipped to manage these passwords. With large teams focused on security and identity services, they can more quickly react to security threats and stay up to date with best practices. See Eric Sachs talk about their announcement of GITkit and why it’s time to kill passwords.

For the enterprise and business market interested in implementing login using email addresses, Janrain provides an SLA and dedicated support along with its Janrain Login Helper service. The integration is lightweight and user profile data is normalized across providers. Login Helper can be deployed alongside Janrain Engage to give customers the option of signing into websites with their social networking accounts or using the more familiar and traditional email address based method. User data can then be stored in Janrain Capture. This offers websites a complete registration flow.   Check out the overview on Janrain Login Helper or contact products@janrain.com to learn more.