Identity is becoming more and more of a challenge nowadays. The requirements for SSO, Federation and complex authentication mechanisms are beginning to significantly tax developers. Not to mention the fact that soon regular username/password schemes won't be able to outrun Moore's Law (ie. desktops will be able to crack most passwords).
A lot of people haven't spent much professional development time examining newer Authentication and Authorization mechanisms. Perhaps the Zermatt Beta (from Microsoft's Federated Identity team) is a good opportunity to dive in. BTW: Their samples and documentation is really impressive for a beta.