* Single sign-on, provisioning/deprovisioning and compliance reporting seen as toughest challenges
Last week I left you with a cliffhanger: “Why will Dave be in Berlin in mid-September?” While not up there with “who shot JR,” I thought it was at least worthy of a bit of weekend puzzling. But it didn’t take long at all for folks to discover that it was the European edition of The Experts Conference that was luring me away from Digital ID World.
Last week I left you with a cliffhanger: “Why will Dave be in Berlin in mid-September?” While not up there with “who shot JR,” I thought it was at least worthy of a bit of weekend puzzling. But it didn’t take long at all for folks to discover that it was the European edition of The Experts Conference that was luring me away from Digital ID World.
This will be the first European TEC since Quest acquired NetPro because it’s only held every other year. It will also be my first TEC since the acquisition, so it will be interesting to see what changes are in place.
Not changing is the presence of TEC progenitor Gil Kirkpatrick, formerly director of engineering at NetPro and now styled “expert in residence” by Quest, as well as his trusty sidekick, Christine McDermott (formerly vice president of marketing at NetPro). As Kirkpatrick just moved his residence from Phoenix to Sydney, Australia, it will be interesting to see how that will affect the conference also.
One of the highlights of TEC, for me, is the survey of attendees, and last spring’s event in Las Vegas (which I also missed – see a pattern?) was no exception. This year 240 (of the 475 delegates from 217 companies in 20 countries) attendees responded to the survey. Among the key findings:
* Single sign-on is the toughest challenge for IT organizations. About 35% of respondents rate this area as “problematic” or “out of control.”
* User provisioning and deprovisioning (30%) and compliance reporting (28%) are the second and third toughest challenges.
* Getting better tools and automation is at the top of the respondents’ wish lists for the third year in a row.
* Despite the economy, the survey found that 70% of respondents are satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs, although strain is showing among the most experienced employees.
* Workload and work hours continue to top the respondents’ list of their jobs’ worst aspects.
The eye-opener there is the provisioning/deprovisioning question. It’s been more than 10 years since the first provisioning applications/services were introduced and yet it’s still presenting problems to IT departments. Admittedly, there’s more to provision these days what with outsourced services and cloud-based apps. And all of the vendors in the IdM space need to note that getting better tools and automation is at the top of the respondents’ wish lists for the third year in a row.
You can read all of the survey results for yourself and — if you’ll be in Berlin in mid-September you can participate in the next one. Hope to see you there!
