* Industry players mull Oracle's purchase of Oblix
Today, we’ll continue to look at Oracle’s acquisition of Oblix and see what others in the identity management area have to say about it. Some people spoke to me on the record, and I’ll attribute their remarks while others wished for some anonymity. I’ll get to those juicy comments a bit later.
Clayton Donley, founder and CTO at OctetString, said: “Oracle is the most application-centric company to make this kind of plunge into identity management. This acquisition has the potential to drive the use of identity management technologies into Oracle’s application developer community as they create value through identity-enabled applications.” That’s a very good point as most mergers and acquisition activity up to this point have involved companies in the security or systems software areas. Having identity management in-house with line-of-business applications could drive a whole new round of acquisitions.
Brian Branigan, from Agreon (“Australia’s only independent systems integrator specializing solely in identity management”) thinks the “Oblix acquisition is sadly inevitable; the Gartner Hype Curve is self fulfilling. My immediate fear is that we are likely to enter a period where pragmatic experience will likely be replaced by vendor-biased dot-com-like hype implying that miracle cures from suite vendors are available to solve all identity ails with minimal effort. Whilst the dust settles on the last 18 months of acquisitions, corporations embarking on the journey may well be the short-term losers.” In other words, if you jump on the bandwagon just because there is a bandwagon, you may end up under the wheels.
Andre Durand, CEO of Ping Identity, sees this as a major turning point: “This marks the end of Chapter 1 in identity management. We’ll likely see a small bit of action as the big guys fill the remaining functional holes in their product lines, but effectively, internal enterprise identity management is done. As the identity management conversation becomes mainstream, the door is now wide open for Chapter 2, which I believe will focus on the whole concept of cross-boundary identity (federated, Internet-scale identity), which is inherently more complex but significantly more interesting. I expect to see a lot of innovation and fresh ideas spring from the young companies in this space, many of which have yet to even hit the scene.” That definitely is the upside.
But what about the other side? One well respected industry executive offered to share true feelings on the acquisition in exchange for anonymity. Since the views seemed valid, I quickly agreed to hide the person’s identity. Here’s that analysis:
“Although Oblix was trying to position itself as a full identity management player, its strength was in directory management and Web access management [WAM]. It was making some noise in Web services, and really not getting any traction as a provisioning player. Given the commoditization of WAM and directory management products, Oblix would have struggled as an independent player moving forward.
“Oracle, on the other hand, was struggling for recognition as an identity management player. It had a strong directory/metadirectory product with Oracle Internet Directory, but it was not getting the respect from analysts, press, and other industry watchers, and this was a thorn in its side. This shows the continued evolution of the market, that directories became mere infrastructure and this [the directory], alone, would not get Oracle recognition. Oracle’s primary competition (Microsoft, Sun, IBM) all had broader identity management offerings, so Oracle really saw a need to fill this hole to compete.
“The other implication this has on the market is with Microsoft. It had a strong relationship with Oblix to complement MIIS [Microsoft Identity Integration Server]. Given Oracle’s feelings for Microsoft, one can assume this partnership will dissolve. Another of Microsoft’s identity management partners, Open Network, was acquired last week by BMC. So, Microsoft has chosen a strategy of loose partnerships to extend its identity management reach, and two of these partners are now gone. What this means to [Microsoft] is a good question to be asking.”
A good question, indeed. We’ll be watching for the answer in the weeks to come.
