Before completely leaving the events of the recent Digital ID World show there were a couple of announcements that I wanted to point out since they concerned identity and identity products on multiple levels. Two old friends of this newsletter, Radiant Logic and SailPoint, announced upgrades to their flagship products. They also announced what could be called an "identity change" for the products. (Compare Identity Management products)

Radiant Logic has been around about as long as I’ve been writing for Network World – and the very first thing I wrote for the magazine was an introduction to the brand new Windows 95! Since that time, Radiant Logic’s virtual directory product has evolved considerably. In the last few years, though, it’s settled down as the RadiantOne Virtual Directory Server (VDS). Over the last few years Radiant Logic CEO Michel Prompt has been hammering away about the need for context in identity (see “Explaining the importance of context in ID mgmt.”) now he’s putting the product where his mouth is with the recent release of the RadiantOne Virtual Context Server (VCS) – the natural follow on to the Virtual Directory Server. Prompt’s theme has been that business information, often in the form of transactional data in the enterprise, is fragmented across business functions and buried into forms and application logic. Integrating this information without a common semantic layer has been a constant challenge of data integration. RadiantOne VCS bridges the void between understanding transactions within and across silos by translating low level data transactions into English sentences.

RadiantOne VCS builds on to the virtualization platform underpinned by RadiantOne VDS – but it’s hard to imagine anyone implementing the virtual directory system without reaping the benefit of the context-based service. Radiant's product page is the place to go for all of the details.

My friends at SailPoint, in Austin, Texas were also eager to talk about a new release during DIDW. Mark McClain, Jackie Gilbert and Darran Rolls sat down with me (note to other vendors – meetings in the hotel bar are much more pleasant than meetings at your trade show booth!) to talk about the governance, risk and compliance market and the release of IdentityIQ 3.0. If, like me, you don’t remember IdentityIQ 2.0 or 1.0, it’s not your memory that’s gone (well, mine is, but not about that).

Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.