Is the technology available?
- Recently Simeio Solutions launched their new version of DirectAXs software-as-a-service (SaaS) suite.
- In 2007, Oracle & Wipro announced Managed Identity Service
- If you do a Google search there is a seemingly endless list of options including startups looking to change the game such as “Symplified”
So why is it desirable?
- Pricing/Packaging - Pay-as-you-go or subscription pricing allows organizations to measure the direct ROI on an quarterly basis plus delivers lower upfront costs and assured service levels
- Deployment - Historically IAM implementations have been labor-intensive and create organizational headaches with change control and process engineering which can be costly.
- Integration - Disjointed products from multiple vendors, suites, or coming into an Enterprise through various acquisitions create incompatibilities but can be challenging to unwire/replace or merge.
- Governance - Provides an immediate/direct combination of identity and access management (IAM) with governance, risk and compliance (GRC) capabilities
- Hosting - Solutions can be fully hosted and remotely managed or on premise and managed externally managed
- Administration – Provides a centralized/unified management of IAM and GRC capabilities for a streamlined user experience with integrated reporting
So what is the problem?
- Multi-tenancy – Existing solutions/architectures require enhanced features for multiple customers to access the same console, provide for data partitioning, and filtering to prevent unauthorized data access.
- Converging Suites - As Identity Management becomes increasingly application centric the drive is towards suites that weave IAM into the fabric of the application framework as Oracle and SAP are moving towards
- Security Concerns - Heightened compliance and security regulations make identity and access management a critical component of today's enterprise, too sensitive to manage externally
- 1-Cloud-to-many-Applications - Enterprise deployments require 20-100 applications to be individually integrated into the IAM suite, connecting user provisioning, single sign on, role management and compliance to the single point of the cloud, across the web with each application creates throttling, latency, and SLA-priority challenges and diminishes the performance of the underlying applications and users.
The march towards dynamic, composite applications architectures is definite but the rate is uncertain and the challenges and risks for the early adopters are high.
