* Making religion work for you in your ID mgmt. project
Last time out we talked about sex and identity projects. Today I want to bring up religion and ID. In many ways, ‘religion’ is the opposite of (or, in classical terms, the ‘complement of’) sex. Where the last issue was concerned with the problem of folks being caught up with the latest hot or sexy products the religion issue concerns people who will swear by a particular product, vendor, protocol or what have you – whether or not it’s right for the situation. This echoes the operating system wars (DOS/Windows, OS/2, MacOS/OS X, Unix/Linux and on and on) of the past 20 years as well as the religious wars of the past thousand.
Another way to look at the issue is to consider the changing landscape of identity products, vendors, protocols and what have you – it seems to change almost daily. The sex issue puts you up against those who want to be the first to use tomorrow’s solutions while the religion issues pits you against those using last year’s model. There’s nothing inherently wrong with either but there’s also no benefit from a slavish consistency either way.
The “religion” problem also covers what we can call the transference of quality issue. This shows up a lot in the supermarket, for example, where a new product is introduced using the brand of an established, tried and true product. Thus, for decades Oreo was the brand of a sandwich cookie consisting of two chocolate cookies with white crème filing. Then came vanilla cookies with chocolate filling, chocolate cookies with green or red or orange filling. Large brownie-like cookies with ice cream filling. Small chocolate crackers with vanilla bits (in the “100 calorie” pack). And on and on. It was thought – quite rightly – that the Oreo name would inspire enough confidence in the shopper to encourage them to buy the new product. A similar transference is hoped for when a company known for a strong presence in one field (say, security) launches products in another field (say, identity) as, for example, RSA did.
So how do you overcome religious issues? It’s best to try to make them work for you. After deciding what you want to use, find ways to tie it to well-known brands, vendors, protocols, etc. Emphasize partnerships with well-known players. Also, investigate current users of the products you want to employ to see if there’s any that are well known to your management. Particularly good are competitors of your own organization – your management can then be persuaded to “keep up with the Joneses!”
Sex and religion, if left uncontrolled, can keep a project from ever getting off the ground. But politics can hamper you every step of the way as we’ll see in the next issue.
