Toolbox

Identity Management: Critical Components

Identity management can start small, but full-blown IDM projects comprise many different pieces. Here's the break-down.

By Mary Brandel

User provisioning is the main engine in support of IDM activities, according to Gartner, whether as a point product or as part of a suite. From 2005 to 2006, user-provisioning revenue grew 12.3 percent, and Gartner expects continued growth through 2009. As of mid-2007, 20 percent to 25 percent of midsize to large enterprises worldwide have implemented some form of user provisioning, Gartner says, with another 25 percent to 33 percent evaluating solutions.

Market trends. Consolidation in the IDM market has been hot since 2002, and while it has slowed, acquisitions will continue, Gartner says. In the provisioning space this year, SAP acquired MaXware (a user provisioning and virtualization vendor), and Oracle bought both Bridgestream (an enterprise role management software vendor) and Bharosa (an online identity theft and fraud software vendor).

Earl Perkins, an analyst at Gartner, anticipates further acquisitions in the role management arena, as many vendors are now partnering with vendors such as Vaau, Eurekify, Bhold and SellPoint, which do role mining and discovery.

Obstacles to implementation. IDM initiatives are complex and require experienced management to increase the chance of success, according to Gartner. Although Gartner says success rates have improved over the years, IDM projects--particularly provisioning efforts--still have a significant failure rate, due primarily to scope definition and managing to that scope.

Common obstacles to successful provisioning implementations include the following, according to Forrester:

• Perceived high implementation and services costs (relative to license costs)
• Unduly long and winding curves of defining business roles for provisioning
• Securing the appropriate level of organizational support
• Spending enough time on business process redesign and role design
• Consolidating user repositories.

Key strategies. These obstacles can be circumvented by following several strategies:

• Start modestly. Implement some of the foundational elements of an IDM system first for some quick ROI.

• Get support. Gartner says it's crucial to gather the appropriate political support within the enterprise and to select an effective program partner outside the company (consultant or system integrator) that understands the business and technical issues of IDM.
• Involve your developers. "Every hour your developers spend alongside the vendor's connector specialist will help your team become self-sufficient with connector development," says Andras Cser, senior analyst at Forrester.

(For more about IDM implementation, see "Identity Management: Implementation Dos and Don'ts.")

A complete IDM system includes the following elements:

• Directory services
• Access management
• Password administration, including single sign-on
• Identity authentication
• User provisioning
• Compliance auditing
• Role management
• Federated identities, which enables the creation of virtual communities of customers and partners that can conduct business on different websites with a single log-in

• Email
• Print
• Comments
• Digg This
• SlashDot

• Identity Management: Implementation Dos and Dont's
• How to Make a Business Case for Identity Management
• The ABCs of Identity Management