Earl Perkins

Hello there. For those that actually read this blog, you are no doubt wondering whether or not I died or moved on to other pursuits. As I frequently say to friends and colleagues alike, never assume a conspiracy when mere ignorance will do. Or in this case, mere laziness on my part. There has been plenty to write about in our areas of interest, it has been my neglect more than anything responsible for the absence of new entries.

But I digress– the topic for today is the identity and access management vendor market. It is changing (as if you didn’t know), with older players trying new things, new players picking up the pace, and even new types of vendors entering the market. There are shifts in the technology now as well– vendors are broadening and expanding customer markets and starting to get a better sense of what customers really want and need. Vendors and their integration partners are also starting to recognize the unsustainability of large, monolithic implementations that require many months or even years to deploy, and are expanding the options they provide customers for implementing IAM. That particular realization is slow in coming, and grudgingly so, but it is coming.

The level of interest customers have in the concept of “IAM as a service” and utilizing cloud computing technologies is rising dramatically. The large IAM vendors are working to position themselves to take advantage of this interest, but it is primarily smaller start-up firms that are leading the way in providing some solutions here, primarily in the access management realm. There are early signs that these vendors have already captured the early attention of potential acquirers, those vendors determined to participate in IAM services but would prefer to address it via acquisition than organic development.

I still remain a skeptic of the long-term viability of the IAM suite concept as a technical differentiator– I know the IAM vendors aren’t crazy about my saying that. However, the market is showing signs of increased choices when it comes to IAM solutions– from appliances for less complex, more scalable solutions to services for quick, low-cost expansion or new service options. As the methods of delivery diverge, the choices customers have to implement IAM increase, and we’re back to that point where no IAM vendor has all delivery methods available in some type of integrated suite– nor are they likely to. There is a point of diminishing returns in trying to sort through large catalogs of service for all but the most ambitious customer.

But that’s just me, and I’m sure many of you have other opinions. I would like to hear them.

The role of the vendor partner is increasing in importance even more– from consulting and integration through managed/hosted IAM providers to the various software-as-a-service (SaaS) centri options, more and more IAM providers are seeking and finding partners at various levels of implementation. While this may increase complexity, it also increases opportunity for getting a specific solution for the customer need rather than bringing more of the customer need to the vendor implementation. Are we headed back to “best-of-breed” in the vendor community? Time will tell.

On a final note, many readers wonder why I am not more specific about particular vendor strategies here, such as Novell for example with the latest going on about them. The simple fact is that some vendors are in particularly “sensitive” stages of their life, and I’m very careful about what I say and how I say it. It’s critical to keep opinion (or perception) separate from facts, else it might be possible to unduly influence market pressures in general. Influencing customer action on a one-to-one basis, however, is quite another story.

The IAM vendor market is changing, presenting them and their customers with some key decisions in the days ahead. For customers, I say buckle your seatbelts.

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