KuppingerCole Videocast: What’s a Digital Double

The concept of the "digital double" isn’t new, but it’s gaining importance as more and more of our lives are lived in the digital world. Asanka Abeysinghe, WSO2's chief technology officer and the creator of this concept, was a guest on a recent KuppingerCole videocast hosted by Martin Kuppinger, founder and principal analyst at KuppingerCole. During the discussion, Asanka spoke about this unique concept, its benefits, and how it relates to customer identity and access management (CIAM). 

Asanka came up with the concept in 2016 while looking at how the digital ecosystem works and how digital applications are being built. He realized that there should be a way to represent people, things, and places inside the digital universe and was inspired by the movie Tron: Legacy to come up with the term "digital double."

Asanka defines the digital double as the fusion of identity and personality. One of its key benefits is that it allows for a more personalized and predictive experience for end-users. As digital ecosystems continue to evolve, machine learning and AI models are being used to make decisions on behalf of the digital double, even when the user is not actively engaged with the system.

There is also a strong synergy between CIAM and the digital double. CIAM can provide the necessary attributes to create a proper digital double, as well as expose the digital double's capabilities as an API for application developers to use.

To make the digital double a reality at scale, CIAM providers will play a critical role in managing and maintaining the necessary data. As standards for decentralized identity (such as DIDs) continue to develop, it will become easier to define digital doubles in a structured way.

Looking towards the future, the concept will play an important role in the metaverse. As Web 3.0, decentralized identity, and the metaverse continue to evolve, standards for defining digital doubles will become more established. However, there will also need to be flexibility for each digital service provider to add or remove attributes depending on the domain and type of service being provided. This is a fascinating development in the world of digital identity and has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with digital services.

To learn more about this fascinating concept, we recommend watching the full KuppingerCole videocast and checking out Asanka's blog on Creating a Seamless Access Experience with the Digital Double.