Lost in the clouds, or service clouds to be exact, are services that help make the integration easier.

OpenID and OAuth are two important mechanisms that made some news last week.

These two should not be confused.

OpenID focuses on using a single identity to sign into multiple sites, whereas OAuth priority is giving access to your data without sharing your identity.

OAuth has been implemented on popular websites such as Plaxo, Digg, Flickr, and Twitter. 

Yahoo! Supports OAuth and OpenID

Both OpenID and OAuth were implemented by Google last January with their Hybrid Protocol.

Now Yahoo! has embraced the OAuth and OpenID technology (a little too late in my opinion).

The benefits are simple: it reduces the total number of browser redirects and website roundtrips, plus it’s one less password for the end-user.  Ask yourself how many user IDs, passwords and PINs you have memorized, only to be forced to change them every 90 days or so.

Now with Google and Yahoo!, you can log into Plaxo seamlessly but where is support for LinkedIn and Facebook?

Zoho Extends OpenID Support to Google Apps

Gmail and Yahoo users are able to log into Zoho, and now they have extended the services to include Google Apps.

When you try to login to Zoho, you’ll notice a new ‘Google Apps’ option in the sign-in box on all Zoho Apps. If you are a Google Apps user, you can choose this option to sign-in to Zoho.

Once you provide your Google Apps domain name, you’ll be redirected to Google to sign-in using your Google Apps credentials.

When you authorize accounts.zoho.com, you’ll be logged in to Zoho directly.