Posted May 30th, 2007 My in-laws live in western Oklahoma. After the requisite tour of town, I find myself with a decent amount of time on my hands. I usually pack a few books along to fill the time.
I’m not sure how I came to buy Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander. I thought I’d give it a try and see how it went. It was a real page turner. Seriously. It is a very dense read that is surprisingly approachable.
At its core, Notes presents a system for decomposing complex design problems. Alexander builds up to this system by examining two types of cultures: unselfconscious and selfconscious. Unselfconscious cultures approach problems with a rich set of traditional solutions in which the builder (problem solver) is reduced to an agent implementing a solution learned by imitation, an informal form of apprenticeship. These cultures’ designs evolved over a sufficiently long period with their environment as the primary constraint. To become a repeated solution, the solution had to fit well within all aspects of the culture’s environment. Selfconscious cultures, in contrast, exist outside of any environmental feedback loops or environmental constraints. These cultures approach design problems with a learned set of principles that impose rules of design.
The system Alexander lays out (and I am paraphrasing greatly here) relies on the decomposition of the problem into subsets of related features. These subsets, or subsystems, must be as independent as possible to accommodate misfits (problems). Misfits within the subsystems must not impact the design as a whole, but be contained within the subsystem. Continue reading "I do my best reading in Oklahoma: Notes on the Synthesis of Form"...
Posted May 15th, 2007 On one hand I can’t say I am that surprised. SAP has been itching to get into the IdM market. There was speculation that they were going to build their own. It is interesting to see that they have chosen, as many others have, to buy instead. I am, however, a little surprised in who SAP purchased.
MaXware was known, primarily, as one of the three major meta/virtual directory companies out there. Maybe SAP saw wisdom in Oracle buying OctetString? (I’d be feeling pretty lonely right now if I was Radiant Logic.) Maybe SAP really just needed the connectivity that MaXware could provide?
I wonder what this means for corporate SAP partners who are already in the identity management space? If I am a provisioning vendor who has spent resources developing integration to SAP and the Virsa bits, I am going to be pretty annoyed that SAP just bought a provisioning technology. Integration partner one day, direct competitor another.
The real reason SAP made this move is the continuing SAP – Oracle War. SAP needs to be able to check the boxes off in an RFP that they have provisioning and identity management services. If SAP is looking to even the playing field, there’s at least one more acquisitions they have to do. They need to buy a large services company likes of Accenture or Booz Allen Hamilton. Granted, doing that will agitate their service partners, but that being said, it would round off SAP and enable them to go toe-to-toe with Oracle. Continue reading "SAP buys MaXware: Column Fodder in the Fight against Oracle"...
Posted May 11th, 2007 Apologies to Lewis Carol and the Cheshire Cat.
Mark MacAuley makes me laugh. He is a funny guy, but that’s not why he makes me laugh. He makes me laugh when he finds situations like this one:
I spoke to a non-US Government Agency yesterday about their Identity Management initiative. Turns out they are hung up on an architecture. Why? Because there is no identifiable (or identified) business process for them to build for. The business users are saying – Just buy a tool and it’ll take care of it that’s what their workflows are for’. Those of us who do this for a living are probably smirking or laughing out loud at the comment. Typical, but one of the leading causes of unsuccessful projects.
Why is this funny? Because I already know this project is doomed to fail and all you can do is shrug your shoulders and laugh.
Having “the business” abdicate its role as the driver of any project like this is criminally irresponsible. (For you hardcore cynics, I don’t care that this is a government example; that’s not an excuse.) Identity Management is waking up from its speed and feeds adolescence. More importantly, the market is starting to snap out of its IT-induced hypnosis, and it is business that will benefit. The business cannot simply punt on an opportunity like this. Continue reading "If you don’t know where you are going, no road will take you there"...
Posted May 2nd, 2007 I have spent a fair amount of time recently, ruminating on compliant provisioning and what comes after it. It is a fascinating mental exercise and if it remained as such, it would be useless. Yesterday, I got to see it in action.
I was at a customer, watching our integration with their provisioning system get installed and configured. It was, as all good software installs should be, quite boring. But what did captivate me was the business case and drivers for compliant provisioning. Though our customer has a mature provisioning system in production, they have yet to achieve fully automated provisioning. Why? Certainly not for lack of trying. Because their SAP environment is large, complex, and ever-changing, they cannot implement a comprehensive set of automated provisioning rules for fear of SoD creeping in.
They already rely of Approva BizRights to do “What If” analysis. It verifies on an ongoing basis that role definitions do not generate separation of duty problem as well as make sure accounts don’t contain any SoD problems as well. Currently, their outsourced help desk fields access requests. They gather up the roles being requests and use BizRights to perform What If analysis on the proposed account changes and then route the request on for provisioning. Continue reading "A Clear Business Case for Compliant Provisioning"...
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