Identity management has been one of the toughest nuts to crack for most big software vendors. Microsoft has made numerous attempts at introducing a new way of keeping track of different passwords and personal information but none have been accepted with open arms by the general public. Infocards is their latest effort and it remains to be seen if it will take hold or not.

IBM and Novell jointly announced today their participation in an Open Source Identity Management project named Higgins. From the press release:

Project Higgins - which is being managed by the Eclipse open source foundation -- is developing software for "user-centric" identity management, an emerging trend in security software. It enables individuals to actively manage and control their online personal information, such as bank account, telephone and credit card numbers, or medical and employment records -- rather than institutions managing that information as they do today. People will decide what information they want shared with trusted online websites that use the software.

One of the biggest hurdles to acceptance with any identity management solution is trust - meaning will people trust the solution enough to actually use it. Time will only tell.