When KuppingerCole outlined the concept of Life Management Platforms several years ago, the perspective of numerous completely new business models based on user-centric management of personal data may have seemed a bit too farfetched to some. Although the very idea of customers being in control of their digital lives has been actively promoted for years by the efforts of ProjectVRM and although even back then the public demand for privacy was already strong, the interest in the topic was still largely academic.

Quite a lot has changed during these years. Explosive growth of mobile devices and cloud services has significantly altered the way businesses communicate with their partners and customers. Edward Snowden’s revelations have made a profound impression on the perceived importance of privacy. User empowerment is finally no longer an academic concept. The European Identity and Cloud Conference 2015 featured a whole track devoted to user managed identity and access, which provided an overview of recent developments as well as notable players in this field.

Qiy Foundation, one of the veteran players (in 2012, we have recognized them as the first real implementation of the LMP concept) has presented their newest developments and business partnerships. They were joined by Meeco, a new project centered around social channels and IoT devices, which has won this year’s European Identity and Cloud Award.

Such industry giants as Microsoft and IBM has presented their latest research in the field of user-managed identity as well. Both companies are doing extensive research targeted on technologies implementing the minimal disclosure principle fundamental for the Life Management Platform concept. Both Microsoft’s U-Prove and IBM’s Identity Mixer projects are aimed at giving users cryptographically certified, yet open and easy to use means of disclosing their personal information to online service providers in a controlled and privacy-enhancing manner. Both implement a superset of traditional Public Key Infrastructure functionality, but instead of having a single cryptographic public key, users can have an independent pseudonymized key for each transaction, which makes tracking impossible, yet still allows to verify any subset of personal information user may choose to share with a service provider.

Qiy Foundation, having the advantage of a very early start, already provides their own design and reference implementation of the whole stack of protocols and legal frameworks for an entire LMP ecosystem. Their biggest problem – and in fact the biggest obstacle for the whole future development in this area – is the lack of interoperability with other projects. However, as the LMP track and workshop at the EIC 2015 have shown, all parties working in this area are clearly aware of this challenge and are closely following each other’s developments.

In this regard, the role of Kantara Initiative cannot be overestimated. Not only this organization has been developing UMA, an important protocol for user-centric access management, privacy and consent, they are also running the Trust Framework Provider program, which ensures that various trust frameworks around the world are aligned with government regulations and each other. Still, looking at the success of the FIDO Alliance in the field of strong authentication, we cannot but hope to see in the nearest future some kind of a body uniting major players in the LMP field, driven by the shared vision and understanding that interoperability is the most critical factor for future developments.

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