* Easy to deploy is the same as quick-start, when it comes to ID mgmt. says Fischer International
The last couple of weeks I’ve mentioned the seeming trend to over quick-start, out-of-the-box provisioning applications and services that allow organizations to begin to see the fruits of their identity management investment much more quickly.
Somewhat tongue-in-cheek (I think!), Fischer International chief marketing officer Dennis McDermott offered what he considered a better approach: “Instead of pre-configuring identity components or offering services to accelerate TTV [time to value], Fischer simply designed a provisioning product that is easy to deploy and integrate.” His note included the following bullet points as proof of this thesis:
* Programming-free workflow creation.
* ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) integration technology.
* Policy creation GUI for business analysts.
* Automated discovery and utilization of role and schema data on target systems.
* Graphical interface that enables non-technical users to map workflow attributes to fields/checkboxes/radio buttons on self-service provisioning/approval Web pages.
McDermott also reminded me that when the Burton Group did a detailed analysis of Fischer Identity Suite it singled-out Fischer’s ease of use as a decided plus (the full analysis is available to Burton clients here).
I also spent some time last week talking to the big guns of Novell Access Manager, Novell Director of Product Marketing, Richard Whitehead and Novell Director of Product Marketing, Loren Russen (a.k.a. “the beet digger”). They explained that Version 3 of Access Manager was, in reality, the continuation of the product that was called iChain, with some differences, and was only tangentially related to the former product known as NAM, Novell Account Manager.
Access Manager does bring together policy-based and context-based access control, works with eDirectory, Sun ONE directory, Active Directory and just about any LDAP-compatible directory. It also contains a basic provisioning service, speaks SPML and complies with the Liberty Alliance specifications. There’s a whole lot more that you can find in the product pages, where you can also download and test out a pre-release version. You will need a Linux platform to try it out.
Come back next issue to see my candidate for dumbest idea in a press release for this month, possibly this year and maybe – just maybe – ever!
