Courion cuts cost of provisioning systems

The foundation for security and enterprise management

Whenever I go through the archives from the early days of this newsletter (as I did for the last issue) I'm reminded of the day back in the fall of 1999 when I came across a small booth in the "start-ups alley" area of a trade show, which featured the new eProvisionware from Business Layers. In my mind that was the beginning of the identity management era.

Not that Business Layers (or their only competitor, Oblix) were selling a product. In those days when you contracted for provisioning you were really contracting for consultants' time to build "connectors" for you. These connectors were the programming widgets that allowed data from one source to flow to another -- directory to database, HR system to CRM application and so on. Each was custom built specifically for your implementation of the various data sources, applications and services you were using.

Over time, abstraction allowed most of this code to be reused, but building connectors was still the expensive part of any provisioning rollout. A single connector can cost $30,000 to $50,000 and a typical enterprise needs dozens of them. You could easily spend over $1 million and still only have enabled less than half of all your applications for the provisioning system.

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Whenever I go through the archives from the early days of this newsletter (as I did for the last issue) I'm reminded of the day back in the fall of 1999 when I came across a small booth in the "start-ups alley" area of a trade show, which featured the new eProvisionware from Business Layers. In my mind that was the beginning of the identity management era.

Not that Business Layers (or their only competitor, Oblix) were selling a product. In those days when you contracted for provisioning you were really contracting for consultants' time to build "connectors" for you. These connectors were the programming widgets that allowed data from one source to flow to another -- directory to database, HR system to CRM application and so on. Each was custom built specifically for your implementation of the various data sources, applications and services you were using.

Over time, abstraction allowed most of this code to be reused, but building connectors was still the expensive part of any provisioning rollout. A single connector can cost $30,000 to $50,000 and a typical enterprise needs dozens of them. You could easily spend over $1 million and still only have enabled less than half of all your applications for the provisioning system.

Courion, last week, changed the system.

In an announcement sure to reverberate throughout the IdM industry, the company announced what it is calling "an enhanced connector program that will radically reduce the cost while expanding the benefits of identity and access management (IAM) in large enterprises."

Chris Sullivan, Courion's vice president, Customer Solutions, told me that the company is deliberately trying to change the game by offering the lowest fixed pricing for connectors the industry has ever seen. Courion's full-suite connectors, whether out-of-the-box or custom designed, will cost $12,000 per system or application. These full-suite connectors include functionality for compliance, password management, provisioning and role management. In addition, Sullivan noted, all PasswordCourier password management connectors will be as low as $9,600.

Provisioning systems need to become commodity items. By that I mean that application and service providers need to be able to expect that a provisioning system will be in place. Cutting the price of connectors by 25% to 35% can go a long way towards creating that situation. Hats off to Courion, and a gauntlet thrown down for their competitors.

Read more about security in Network World's Security section.

Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.