In the days before widespread use of the web, a user would log into a single server (or a handful of servers) and only have to remember one or two passwords. Applications were assumed to be for a single user, and didn’t require login credentials. Then, as the internet began to gain popularity and applications begin to be run on the web, the number of login credentials a user had to memorize increased from just a few, to several dozen. It also meant the number of user stores grew, creating a number of identity silos. User credentials were no longer centralized in a single directory, but spread over a number of systems across the web. Who was going to manage these credentials and how would they do it in an efficient way? Federation was created to solve this problem. If you’ve ever worked with SaaS products such as SalesForce or.