Provisioning Workflows over the Cloud?

I was reading Nishant Kaushik blog post about his session at Oracle Open World (http://blog.talkingidentity.com/2009/10/screencast-of-my-openworld-session-on-idm-and-the-cloud.html) and got me thinking about the cloud and the need for Identity Services providers.

Could public-providers of Identity Services be a reality or just a utopian dream?

There are several issues, and in my mind benefits for business clients using an Identity Service provider for their Identity Management needs, instead of using a costly IdM installation.

Mid-size businesses can actually benefit from the use of such services due to the possible low cost and speed of integration, but an issue that is not normally talked about is provisioning workflow, and if a "cookie-cutter" approach is used, businesses will be forced to make changes to their current business processes which would normally be a rejected approach.

Can it be possible to provide workflow services over the cloud in an efficient way for provisioning?

Update: October 19, 2009 - I just found a company that provides provisioning workflow as part of their Identity Management solution for SaaS environments. I can't really evaluate it, but it will be interesting to see what they have to offer: Conformity, Inc.