Posted March 6th, 2009 Being the new-ish addition to the IdPS team is, well, an interesting place to be. Besides the requisite induction activities (ask me at Catalyst how you pick up the dry cleaning for a team who lives all across the country), I’ve been working with my peers on vastly different pieces of research. And being curious by nature, I’m loving the chance to not only dig into different topics, but also observe how different people go about the actual process of analyzing a topic or a market. One technique that Burton Group uses is Contextual Research (CR). Essentially, the CR process is meant to challenge an analyst’s knowledge of a subject and their associated preconceived notions as to what problems enterprises face and how they are facing them. It turns seasoned veterans, experts in the field, into beginners again. This is what practitioners of Zen Buddhism call “beginner’s mind.”
Here’s how it works in a nutshell. Kevin (seasoned vet) and Ian (newbie) identify a bunch of organizations to talk to. So far nothing out of the ordinary as compared to our other approaches to research. That being said, the conversations we have with these organizations is very different from typical research techniques. Instead of coming to the conversation with a fixed hypothesis that we want to prove out, we come to the conversation with nothing. No leading questions. No surveys. No preconceptions. Continue reading "Zen Mind, Newb Mind"...
Posted March 10th, 2008 Jackson, in discussing the demise retrenchment of HP’s identity business, had this little gem:
We talk about Identity 2.0 in the context of Web services and the evolution of digital identity but our infrastructure, enterprise identity “stuff” is decrepit and falling apart. I have visions of identity leprosy with this bit and that bit simply falling off because it was never built with Web services in mind.
Bits falling of, eh? I’ve never heard of someone losing their core directory services because someone forgot to add XACML support. I’ve also never heard off someone loosing an ear because their provisioning system didn’t support SPML v2. Enterprise identity “stuff” is more like a zombie. It lurks in the dark corners of your enterprise. It staggers out at you at inopportune moments. Two other aspects of this ridiculous image that are valid:
- The identity zombie is incredibly hard to kill.
- The identity zombie needs BRAINS!
“They stab with their steely knives…” Once deployed, even in rudimentary forms, enterprise identity systems are amazing difficult to uproot, to kill. Homegrown systems are notoriously tough to maintain as well as replace. Even worse were those early attempts at vendor provided solutions. Before IBM/Tivoli bought Access360, it had Tivoli User Administrator. TUA… one of the banes of my existence. The thing wouldn’t die. The customers who got it running were actually in love the rotting smelly thing. They kept it on a steady diet of scripts (BRAINS!) that served as connector definitions and entitlements all rolled into one. It just ran and ran and ran. From what I heard, early BMC Control/SA customers are much the same. Continue reading "Identity leprosy or identity zombies?"...
Posted January 14th, 2008 A while back I had commented on consolidation in the role management world. As I have said before, from product management and marketing perspectives, integrating a role management tool into an existing identity management suite is a no-brainer. This is not to say that the implementation and deployment are no-brainers as well – so don’t get too excited Greg  What is more interesting is where major vendors like Oracle and Sun will take enterprise roles management.
I had also mentioned that it would be great for Kevin Kampman of Burton to weigh in on the subject, and sure enough, he did. I am intrigued by his concept of “return on organization.” But to see this return it first requires identity management vendors to share this value proposition with the parts of the enterprise that really care; it forces IdM vendors to sell to “the business.” Making identity management truly relevant to the entire business has always been one of IdM’s challenges. Role management does present a new way of taking older topics to a new audience but I wonder if potential customers are ready to hear it.
Posted December 4th, 2007 Nishant, in a light hearted manner, took my post on Sun acquiring Vaau as a bit of a dare. This is how I responded to his comment:
Since I don’t believe that ERM is an end in and of itself, I am more curious where the market and technology will go now that two “suite” vendors have made acquisitions. If, by orchestrating some sort of challenge between Oracle and Sun to integrate and innovate, I can help move things along, then yes, by all means, consider it a challenge. Maybe the gang at Burton Group can referee this?
How vendors like Sun and Oracle integrate their ERM acquisitions will have a very tangible impact on the future direction of identity management. Both are in a position to unlock the true value of enterprise role management.
The step of integrating ERM in user provisioning is a no brainer, though it will be interesting to see how fast each vendor can do it. What is more interesting is the step beyond that. I started to ruminate on that before… guess we’ll have to wait and see what comes.
In the meantime, it would be great if someone like Kevin Kampman would weigh in on this.
Posted November 14th, 2007 A second enterprise roles management company has been acquired. Sun has announced intent to buy Vaau. Congrats to Sachin, Steve Tiches, and the rest of the gang at Vaau. You are definitely joining a great team.
It will interesting to see how fast Sun can tie Vaau’s various components to their existing suite. I have to imagine that what was Identity Auditor, now part of Identity Manager, will be replaced entirely by Vaau’s identity audit capability. Comparing Sun’s time to integrate Vaau to Oracle’s time to integrate Bridgestream ought to be interesting as well.
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