OK so it's not a new idea as I was reminded by a close colleague. However, I was given a ray of hope. As many who follow the tech news, Apple released their iphone. Not a new idea - a cell phone. It was their take on how a phone should work that made the difference. This has sounded alarms across the entire industry: ring tones and backgrounds could be a free service since you can create them easily in the phone! This is the kind of thinking I like to use in all of our products, take the same old functionality but put an original spin on it.
Take password recovery, kind of a blah topic. An admin keys in a bunch of security questions and answers into some database app so the user can use this to reset their password or unlock their account.
Now for The Directory Wizards spin.
It's a great idea, but what if the answers were stored in Active Directory as attributes in the user's object? No database needed, just leverage what is in place. Now let the user, through Profiler, key in their own security answers. The net - Same functionality but removing a database server and administrator from the solution. Sounds like progress to me...