I have been harping on about getting better login and identity management for the Domino server for a little while now. It's been turning over in my sub-conscious and percolating away since last year. I have held off putting it into Idea jam until I had some idea about what I thought would be needed, at least the basics.

Well, now here is a stab at it. Please have a look and be as brutal as you see fit.

In summary, I think that identity is a critical requirement, and the following features are needed for the Domino server to remain relevant in this era of the Web.

Domino is heading down the road of SaaS and so the interest and necessity of a Notes client I believe is well and truly waning. Whoa! The Notes client is dead ? Well, not exactly, but let's look at where it's heading.

The interest seems to be RIA and mobile app's. Far from getting lighter, the Notes client is getting heavier. Alot of work has been done on Xpages with Xpages support within the client. So, it makes the Notes client less attractive to deploy, if it's bigger and heavier, and can be eclipsed, (pardon the pun), by RIA app's/iNotes, then all your providing is legacy support and a platform for some really complex applications that are too expensive to sort out as an RIA.

IBM are all giddy about LotusLive / Lotus Engage, and trumpet big growth numbers in those areas. Combine that with the licensing costs between the offerings, and you can see the path of least resistance. So, the future is laid before you, keep building web-app's because it's more relevant than the notes client.

So, if the web is the pointy end of the stick, then we'll need some better identity management so us developers can easily exploit the server and not waste soooo much time on doing what is now regarded as "the basics" when it comes to user management for web app's. Your thoughts please....