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I think this is an important topic. I believe the main drivers for consolidation are the pursuit of greater cost-efficiencies and revenue. I’m not really sure that either of these can be addressed
through de jure standardisation, unless a standard is able to change the underlying economics to the detriment of consolidation. Federation for the sake of federation is also a dead end: all other things being equal, operational subsidiarity reduces the scope for economies of scale. Federation is best employed where subsidiarity
creates opportunities to extract value that exceeds the benefits realisable from consolidation. A good example is identity federation, where a single identity can be reused across multiple domains. The need for Enterprises to know their employees to a high degree of confidence (e.g., to comply
with employment or taxation law) provides a “free” pool of highly-assured identities that can be reused for purposes that would be inappropriate for less-assured identities asserted by a provider of social identities. Other drivers for federation include sovereignty and compliance, which stem from political or legal considerations. Given the increasingly global character of governance and regulation (e.g., the
extraterritoriality of the GDPR), I suspect that we will see an increasingly homogenous environment. I would argue that this is a positive development, as federation within a heterogenous environment tends to increases costs and complexity, and reduces the
capabilities of the entire system to that supported by the lowest common denominator. To that end, I think an argument could be made that the internet architecture needs to a greater extent with the regulatory environment (and ideally take a lead in helping
to define that, rather than follow with heels dragging), as that both facilitates federation and reduces compliance costs for users. Josh. From: ietf <ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx>
On Behalf Of Jari Arkko One of the topics we’ve discussed recently at the IAB are consolidation trends in various Internet services, and how architecture be affected by those trends or vice versa. And whether there might be IETF work that would be useful due to all this. Here’s a blog article on this topic: https://www.ietf.org/blog/consolidation/ Thoughts? One good location for discussion of this topic would be the architecture-discuss list Jari Arkko for the IAB Jisc is a registered charity (number 1149740) and a company limited by guarantee which is registered in England under Company No. 5747339, VAT No. GB 197 0632 86. Jisc’s registered office is: One Castlepark, Tower Hill, Bristol, BS2 0JA. T 0203 697 5800. Jisc Services Limited is a wholly owned Jisc subsidiary and a company limited by guarantee which is registered in England under company number 2881024, VAT number GB 197 0632 86. The registered office is: One Castle Park, Tower Hill, Bristol BS2 0JA. T 0203 697 5800. |
