Client and server using same SSL certificate - any issues? I'm working on software where multiple components will communicate with each other using SSL.

There would be one central component acting as a server, which would also require the clients to present a certificate. So there is mutual trust between the clients and server. The software will be deployed internally within organisations.

To avoid the pain of creating and distributing multiple SSL certificates, can a single certificate be generated once for each organisation, and then used by all of the components within that organisation?
If all the components share the same certificate, then they share the same private key. This raises the two following points:


When a secret is shared by more than two people, can it still be considered really secret ? Secrecy dilutes fairly fast. If all components share the same secret value, then breakage of any single component reveals the private keys and endangers the whole system. Similarly, every single client or server has the power to impersonate every other client or server in the system.
If client and server share the same secret value, why would you use certificates at all ? Certificates make sense when every entity has its one private key which never travels around. If client and server contain the same secret sequence of bits, then they could use pre-shared key cipher suites, which will use no certificate at all, and might be faster as well.