Federation? Oh, you mean Star Trek!

Had to laugh at this one. I know that we all - including me - have the tendency to start breathing our own exhaust. This posting by Ping Identity brought back to mind a humorous comment that took place in a focus group market study I did on federation a few years back...

We asked the participants to write out a definition to a series of directory-related terms. We actually ran the focus groups in 3 cities (Chicago, New York and LA) and had 3 focus groups in each city (2 for enterprise-size companies and 1 for small/medium businesses). We filmed and taped the sessions which were professionally moderated. The participants did not know that Microsoft was "behind the glass".

When I presented the findings back in Redmond I did out-takes from the videos to highlight the unusual or interesting. The piece that drew that greatest laugh was when an attendee put up their hand to ask for clarification on the what we meant by the term "federation". His question:

"Do you mean like Star Trek?"

Have we progressed much further than that in the last 3-4 years? I'm not sure. I think the average IT director/administrator/manager, CxO, and CISO probably would ask the same question today.

What do you think? Scotty, will we ever get this bucket to warp speed?

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