Identity – whether we’re talking about internal authentication (think Auth0) or external authentication (think Okta) – has become boring.
Little else proves this better than the fact that Okta and Auth0 are now the same company and that their primary competitor, Microsoft AD, survives based on bundling and momentum. Identity has become a commodity – a component you buy off the shelf, integrate, and ignore.
Of course, taking valuable things for granted isn’t always bad. We might regularly drive on roads we don’t think much about, for example, but that doesn’t make them any less valuable.
The danger with letting identity become boring is that we’re not engaging in the problem and we’re letting defaults drive the conversation rather than context-specific needs. We’re not engaging in the solution because we’re not encouraging a true buy vs. build discussion.
My pitch: Let’s make identity fun again. And in doing so, let’s think through a better way to decide whether to build or buy software.
