Quick look at SSO through the ages

I found this article few days back... An interesting map of the road I have travelled so far... :)

Let’s take a quick look at SSO through the ages.

• It started with password synchronization, but that soon became too cumbersome, too labor-intensive, and required too much integration to be a true ”enterprise” solution. 
• Next we had the concept of enterprise SSO where all credentials were stored and the appropriate fields were automatically filled in when login was required. But ESSO doesn’t leverage more modern SSO concepts and is still difficult to implement and manage. 
• Finally we arrived at “true” SSO for Windows with the advent of Active Directory (AD), where a single account and a single credential provides universal access without any synchronization or form-filling. The problem is it only works for Microsoft stuff or things that you can get to play nice with AD, leaving many critical systems out in the cold. 
• Today we have the concept of federation, which is “true” SSO for web applications, but only if those applications talk the right standards, leaving lots of legacy web applications and all thick client apps out of the equation.

Never ending story if there is no common standard. By the way, there won't be any common standard in an ideal world. Contradicting? Yes, my take. 

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