* OpenNetwork enables Microsoft identity server to sync with multivendor services
Provisioning is the practice of seeing that a new employee has everything they need on their first day of work, and – equally important – that all access is removed after their last day with the organization. Electronic provisioning has been around for 5 or 6 years, but was dominated by small, start-up, single-purpose vendors such as Business Layers, Waveset, Access360 and others. Just recently, major players, such as Sun, HP and IBM, have been acquiring these single-purpose vendors while others, including Novell and Oblix, have devised homegrown provisioning tools. Microsoft’s entry into this space is based on using the recently introduced Microsoft Identity Integration Server.
MIIS is an example of what’s called a “metadirectory,” a tool to synchronize identity data between and among various repositories such as Active Directory, Exchange, SQL Server, etc. Not that there’s much sync needed – at least with current releases of these products – but the tool is there. Most people, though, want to synchronize and provision accounts with all of the major services and applications in their network, including software from PeopleSoft, SAP and Oracle, and tools such as eDirectory, iPlanet, Apache, and so on. This presents a quandary for Microsoft.
The boys in Redmond sometimes appear to operate under the impression that if you ignore something it will go away. So they deliberately don’t create the connectors and drivers necessary for MIIS to synchronize with, say, Oracle’s products or Novell’s. But Oracle and Novell aren’t going away (nor is IBM, Sun, PeopleSoft, SAP, etc.) and many of Microsoft’s customers are using their products. Sun, IBM and Novell would gladly come in and sell you a provisioning solution that handles all of the platforms, services and applications you’re running – including those from Microsoft. That’s not good for Microsoft, and thus the quandary.
Fortunately, there’s Tampa’s OpenNetwork, which is quite willing to step in and solve Microsoft’s dilemma.
Many of the companies selling provisioning solutions have large teams of programmers devoted to creating and maintaining directory systems and synchronization engines. OpenNetwork, on the other hand, realized that by tightly coupling its provisioning tools to Microsoft’s MIIS it could save a lot of money by not having to develop its own synchronization engine, while gaining an entrée into just about any Windows network. You see, what OpenNetwork does is to provide the connectors and drivers so that MIIS can synchronize with all of those non-Microsoft identity-consuming services and applications that are running in your network.
OpenNetwork does a lot more for you than simply aiding the solution to your provisioning problem. In fact, if your problem has anything to do with Active Directory then OpenNetwork probably has a tool that will help solve it. After all, if the company can solve Microsoft’s quandary how hard can it be to solve yours?
