Patent ID: 7552481

Claim:
A method of implementing network identity capability within an organization, the method comprising: assessing the organization's identity capabilities regarding the organization's employees, customers, technology infrastructure, and relationships with business partners; assessing the organization's identity requirements regarding the employees, customers, technology infrastructure and relationships with business partners; redesigning said technology infrastructure to accommodate said identity requirements, wherein said redesigning involves establishing a set of common identity definitions for use within the technology infrastructure, said services and the relationships with said business partners; enabling role-based access to services offered by the organization; decoupling users' identity information from the users' access to said services, wherein the users include at least the employees and the customers, wherein said decoupling users' identity comprises enabling users to access a plurality of said services offered by the organization after a single authentication of the users' identity; and obtaining user identity information from a trusted identity provider service external to the organization.