Options shrink for ID mgmt.

For better or worse, as provisioning and access management software matures, your options for buying these products – separately at least – are being reduced. That seems to be the conclusion of a story we have in our Enterprise Applications section this week.

Experts have said for years that the two technologies make sense together: They provide the ability to automatically create identities using provisioning software and then use those identities to secure resources through access management software. In the past, many vendors created alliances to tie together their products on certain platforms, such as Windows. Now there is a race among major vendors and upstarts to create suites of identity management products our author says (jfontana@nww.com).

In the past two months, Sun bought provisioning vendor Waveset Technologies for an undisclosed amount to round out its identity platform, and Netegrity spent $44 million to buy provisioning provider Business Layers to complement its access management software.

The consolidation is happening under the banner of identity management, which ties together authentication, directory services, provisioning, and user- and access-management technology. Identity management lets companies reduce user management costs, increase security, ensure privacy and comply with federal regulations.

Consolidation will do some good overall by driving the technology forward faster than independent vendors can do it. But there are fewer and fewer of those independents.

 For more on this story see: https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0126accessmgmt.html