Market IDM: what and why?
Prologue
At one of the famous western IT vendor, which took a couple of years ago, I saw an interesting rationale for the ups and downs of popularity and demand of various technologies of the IT market. Perhaps it will seem trivial to someone or friends, but it helped me resolve many issues lifecycle.
This methodology is called the Hype Cycle and presented to the international research company Gartner, whose "Magic Quadrant" is widely known in the market of information technologies. The essence of this interpretation of the maturity of the technology cycle is fairly simple. Any product or group (market) products that solve the same problem, are in the process of its evolution from a start-up to steady popularity the same way, which can be represented as a curve on the graph, where the vertical axis are the expectations of consumers, the horizontal axis - time . This path can be divided into several stages, where there is a stage of rapid growth expectations, the stage of frustration (recession expectations) and the stage of growth with adequate access to the so-called "plateau of productivity." Each technology to be provided in the annual Gartner research Hype Cycle, noted on the curve showing its age. Moreover, there are technologies that run this route for 3 years, there is that in 10 years only come to the peak of expectations, and there are "losers" that to the mass consumer is not reach.
Unfortunately, we could not find a relevant picture for the market IDM, but, in my opinion, he has already passed the stage of marketing and boom, and the stage of frustration from the use of Western technology, and currently going through a phase of education to establish itself as a mature solution used the majority of users of the IT market.
The current situation
Of course, we must pay tribute to the pioneers of the market IDM. In my view, these include, first of all, a corporation Oracle, which in the early to mid-2000s, was actively promoting your product on the market. Everything I've heard about the decisions IDM while - it was Oracle, and sources of information were the most diverse, - seminars, conferences, Internet, customers, etc. Large-scale lobby western IT vendor has borne fruit - began implementation in large Oracle-centric companies, some of which continue to this day. This is not to say that the fault was the unrealized expectations vendor or integrator, which introduced IDM. Just before the first implementations there was no understanding that the IDM-solutions - not boxed product, and for its implementation should be approached carefully. Such failures have affected and in general, the market for access control systems, which passed in the period of frustration.
Despite the downturn phase of expectations, technology continued to live IDM. There were new and approved the "old" players in the Russian market. IDM market was no exception, and in terms of globalization, small single-product vendors were bought up by major international players in the IT market, carried out acquisitions and alliances. So the Russian market learned about the decisions IBM Tivoli Identity Manager, Dell has acquired Quest, Oracle has enriched its competence through the purchase of Sun, the company's assets NetIQ and Novell have been merged into a single investment group company, Microsoft has enriched its range of IT security solution Forefront Identity Manager (FIM).
During this period, begin their development and domestic solutions. But domestic manufacturer, usually having a strong team of developers, much inferior to Western vendors in terms of marketing and sales approach. This is due both to lack of investment, even in a successful start-up projects, as well as the gaps in the strategic development of industrial information security solutions.
But all that is done - for the better. The domestic market is ripe for new proposals expected from the recession, and the last couple of years we can observe a renewed strong demand for access control decisions. In this regard, domestic developers IDM-making invigorated at the right time and a lot of impact on the recovery of the market in its segment. In 2013, we witnessed the marketing activities and other vendors mentioned above. There are new domestic players: in the segment IDM has positioned the product under the brand name "CUB" from the Russian company Trustverse.
But to say that the market IDM currently held - it is too early. It is possible that we have not once hear about new products and future technologies for controlling access to information systems.
Problems of implementation
Why did for over 10 years and with the undoubted efficiency for business solutions IDM just beginning its large-scale development? There are several reasons, which we'll discuss in this section. Conventionally, I would have shared the financial and technological, although the latter, ultimately, it is still possible to express in monetary terms.
With financial reasons, everything is easy. This is the high cost of software licenses and work on implementation. So often the case with many emerging technologies, when the first manufacturers usually foreign, who, guided by the big companies make a proposal to the market. Such a proposal is not convenient for everybody, so there are new players, the market becomes more competitive, and the cost of solutions is adjusted downwards. That is to say that today the market there are different price offers that are of his client.
The second pool of problems - is the technological difficulties associated with the integration of IDM-making in the IT infrastructure of the customer.
The first of the problems of this group is associated with deep integration of IDM in information systems. Without it will not work no IDM-decision because its main objective - is to manage user accounts in information systems. This problem is solved by the so-called connectors, through which the core IDM works with customer applications. As customers use the software applications from multiple vendors to solve their business problems, and a variety of connectors that are appropriate. I do not need to explain how often non-trivial to develop connectors to third-party application, especially when there is no understanding of the core code IDM. In this part of the domestic solutions more competitive, because the development of the connector, usually carries himself vendor.
The next problem is related to a number of process using role-based architecture IDM-systems. Indeed, the effective automation control access to information systems is possible only if there is a role model, which allows you to associate a specific employee with his identity in information systems, and most importantly - to give him the rights corresponding to its role (job description). The development of such a role model - an extremely time-consuming process that can last for years in large companies. This is due to the fact that for each unique position to create a role that has the full set of rights to information systems. And in an ideal situation the same job correspond to a single role, in practice by staff in the same job may have different roles with additional responsibilities. Therefore, in order to effectively determine the role, you must obtain relevant technical information, "unloading" on the Rights of information systems, information systems administrators to interview (or individual modules), security administrators and resource owners, read heads of business units. And then bring it all into a single matrix and align it with all the members of the previous process, and the management of the customer. Who is involved in consulting, they understand how it is "heavy" organizational process. Although I have painted a fairly simplified picture, in real project is much more varied and richer.
But since the introduction of the classic version developed IDM-solutions, namely - by role-based model developed "by hand". To optimize this process leading manufacturers of IDM-systems offered a promising approach that provides the automation process of developing a role model for the built-in intelligence.
The immediate prospects
In the previous section I want to say a few words about the functionality to develop a role model as a promising model introduction IDM-making. The whole idea is not new, it has already offered to the market such IT giants like Oracle and Sun, in the form of a module Role Manager. But the licensing policy did not allow effective use of this mechanism, because its functionality is used only once during the system implementation, and the cost is quite high. Therefore, in the domestic market at the time of the respective implementations did not take place. However, the same functionality is being tested at the company's outpost, and taking into account the negative experience of the market, ignoring the Western vendors are expensive solutions, this solution will be available as a free module Role Management & Analytics to the basic functionality of IDM. It is expected that this will speed up the implementation of projects on IDM in large companies, to few months.
As the current trends of the market IDM also want to note the development of proposals for medium-sized businesses. As noted earlier, the Western vendors initially focused on big business, based on which, the rise and licensing policy. Opportunity to purchase software licenses, for example, 500 people missing quotation started from a few thousand users, the cost of the project for implementation IDM tens of millions of rubles. It is clear that such proposals were not available to companies with fewer than 2-3 thousand employees. In this regard, the domestic industry has adjusted IDM-market, allowing the automation of the process of access control in information systems at a reasonable price and within a reasonable time frame.
Trying to improve their competitive advantage, developers IDM-solutions extend the functionality. Here it is impossible not to note the trend of integrated solutions, where the range of problems solved by the system goes beyond the classic IDM, and includes areas adjacent to access control.
Epilogue
Summarizing, we can say that the market IDM is currently in a stage of rapid development. This confirms the activity of vendors, including Russian, and large-scale demand from customers to resolve problems related to access control. So my article I would like to finish by rephrasing the Soviet poet - all IDM-s good, choose the taste!
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