Identity Service Provider and Shibboleth

I've been at the UCISA conference in Blackpool, which is the first time I've been to a conference exhibition targeted at IT managers rather than techies, geeks or hackers. I'm a little staggered by both the complete lack of technical interoperability know how on display: there are at least five large companies present trying to flog identity management systems, but no one at any of the stands is ever able to comment on how their system compares to, relates to, or inter-operates with any of the other systems on offer. Even worse, only one seemed to have a solid knowledge of Shibboleth, the system that the JISC has plumped for.

For the record, Sun came out on top and Microsoft at the bottom.