Graham Titterington
Sun launches slimmed-down identity and access management product
Sun has released its Identity Compliance Manager product as a subset of its existing Sun Role Manager product. The headline differences are that it costs half the price but lacks support for roles. This kind of initiative is to be expected in other areas of IT in the current economic climate. However, it also needs to be assessed in relation to the long-standing barriers to deployment of identity management products.Investment in difficult economic times
Sun cites regulatory requirements for access rights to be certified, and the threat of insiders stealing or corrupting corporate data, as the drivers for this new product. However, neither of these factors is new or has significantly changed over the last two years. The timing of this announcement is driven by the economic climate.Sun is offering a half-price product in an attempt to duck under corporate investment ceilings and also to win market share from its competitors. The reality with IT projects is that deployment costs including consultants, changed working practices and IT support are usually higher than the software licence costs. Identity management projects have a high ratio of implementation to licence costs. Identifying roles and defining detailed access permissions for each role is a major part of the implementation task, and so eliminating this aspect of the product is also a cost saver in the short term. Cutting out this area of functionality reduces both licence costs and deployment costs, but at the price of reducing the benefits of the overall project.Sun estimates that customers will start to see a return on investment within 90 days of starting an Identity Compliance Manager project, with most of the gain coming from automation of aspects of the compliance process. This will not be good enough to place the project in the 'must do' category of investment proposals at the current time, but it will place it in the 'credible project' group.Identity management is an uphill struggle
Introducing an entry level product addressing the single most pressing business need in the identity management area is a shrewd move. However, it is likely to generate more downward price pressure on vendors across the sector. Vendors need to remain focused on ease of deployment as their number one priority.Identity management systems can deliver massive benefits to organisations:- improving efficiency through automated and rapid provisioning, for example by cutting the time before a new joiner becomes productive from weeks to hours
- reducing risk through instant de-provisioning of leavers
- automating compliance assurance and reporting
- identifying and remedying anomalies in application and data usage, and providing a view of what really happens across an organisation.
