Stuart's notion of an "identity bus" seems to have some legs: http://www.id-conf.com/blog/2008/05/02/interviews/
AFAIK, Stuart first publicized this idea at DEC 08 in Chicago.
And yes, it's "Dale Olds", not "Dave Olds". Dale, FWIW, was the guy who pointed NetPro in the direction of building directory products for NDS back in the day (1994).