Oracle jumps to the forefront of ID-management market

New version of Oracle product upgrades deployment, workflow and diagnostic wares

By Mandy Andress, Network World Lab Alliance, Network World
January 22, 2007 12:05 AM ET

The latest edition of Oracle's Identity Manager builds on the core provisioning functionality the company acquired with its 2005 purchase of Thor Technologies with new deployment, workflow, diagnostics and attestation tools. This additional functionality greatly improves the product and may very well put it at the top of the provisioning market.

How we tested Oracle Identity Manager
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OIM contains the standard provisioning functions: automated user-provisioning capabilities through the use of policies, roles and workflows; the ability to manage user accounts across many systems and applications from a single interface; and user self-services, such as registration and password reset. OIM differentiates itself through the addition of the attestation process, which lets IT management perform certification of user access with a full audit trail, a requirement of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

ID MANAGEMENT

ORACLE IDENTITY MANAGER 9.0.1
Oracle

4.08

Price:	$60 per user and $40,000 per connector.
Pros:	Integrated access-control attestation process; flexible engine for rules, workflows and reconciliation.
Cons:	Custom reports not accessible within the product console; lacks GUI-based workflow building tool.

The breakdown
Provisioning workflow 30%	4.5	Scoring Key: 5: Exceptional 4: Very good 3: Average 2: Below average 1: Subpar or not available
Provisioning configuration 35%	4.0
System management 15%	3.5
Reporting 20%	4.0
TOTAL SCORE	4.08

See how Oracle's OIM compares with other ID management products in our Buyer's Guide.

Click to see: Oracle Identity Manager 9.0.1

For testing, Oracle provided a Windows 2003 server VMware image comprising instances of all necessary product components. See the highlighted information below.

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How we tested Oracle Identity Manager

Oracle provided a VMware environment running on a Windows 2003 server that we ran on a 3GHz, 1.6GB RAM server, with Oracle Identity Manager installed.

Oracle also provided a test environment of directories (Active Directory and Sun Directory Server) and other provisioning targets (Oracle Application Server and Oracle Portal 10.1.2.0.2), Oracle Internet Directory 10.1.4 and Exchange 2003. For user population, we tested about 10 accounts.

We tested the provisioning process from beginning to end, testing reconciliation by adding new resources to the human-resources system and having it reconcile with OIM. We looked at provisioning policies and role changes to set basic entitlements and adjusted them based on defined role. We then looked at self-service account registration and password control.

This was followed by testing the various report options available within the product. Our final level of testing involved defining and completing an attestation process to review, approve and/or deny user access.