As posted at SilverStripe.com:

Thanks to one of our open source community members, Roel Gloudemans, you can now use SilverStripe in conjunction with external authentication sources. This allows you to login to the CMS or other secure parts of your SilverStripe website with an account stored in LDAP, Active Directory, a mailserver and so on.

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"Ever since the Windows Live ID Web Authentication SDK was announced a couple of months ago, many people have asked when there would be a solution for WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007 to authenticate Windows Live ID users. Well, it didn't take long for Keith Bunge, a developer with Solanite Consulting and contractor extraordinaire to several SharePoint projects at Microsoft, to develop a solution and actually dogfood it on his own blog site. I quickly recruited him to join the CKS project, and he has subsequently updated the initial version of his solution to be released now as CKS: Windows Live Authentication."

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I'm convinced that digital identity and universal authentication systems will make it big on the IT radar scope for 2007. While a number of propriety systems have cropped up over the years, the open-source project OpenID has started to make headlines as it tackles the problems and solutions for digital identity.

OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.

OpenID starts with the concept that anyone can identify themselves on the Internet the same way websites do-with a URI (also called a URL or web address). Since URIs are at the very core of Web architecture, they provide a solid foundation for user-centric identity.

I was first introduced to OpenID through the blogs of Scott Kveton. In one of Mr. Kveton's recent posts he talks about open source projects using plug-ins and modules for converting their content management system (CMS) over to OpenID. More specifically, he discusses the use of a Drupal module for adding OpenID support in his post, Converting your site to OpenID.

It was announced by Joomla.org that the Beta for Joomla! 1.5 is expected to be released on October 12th. Some of the goals and features that are to be included in this new version of the content management system are:

• Substantial improvement in usability, manageability, and scalability. The project team's goal is to improve Joomla! "far beyond the original Mambo foundations".

• Expanded accessibility to support internationalisation, double-byte characters and Right-to-Left support for Arabic and Hebrew languages.

• Additional integration of external applications through Web Services and remote authentication such as the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).

• Enhanced content delivery, template and presentation capabilities to support accessibility standards and content delivery to any destination.

• A more sustainable and flexible framework for component and extension developers.

• Deliver backward compatibility with previous releases of components, templates, modules and other extensions.

Of all the features listed above, I would think organizations would be most excited about in Joomla! 1.5 is the ability to support remote authentication services such as LDAP. Most organizations would like to see their employees only have to log into their enterprise software once and not have separate user names or passwords to access e-mail, calendar system, groupware, and content management systems.