Regulation and compliance are continuously driving adoption of
security and identity management technology, and while leading
vendors are successful in providing end-to-end tools for larger
enterprises, there is lower uptake among small and medium-sized
shops, an industry analyst said.
Smaller firms typically deploy one or two components of identity
and access management, but vendors are failing to "bring some
clarity regarding fit, purpose, and price to SME decision-makers,"
said Darin Stahl, research analyst at Info-Tech Research in London,
Ont.
"SME's are being presented confusing offerings from full suites,
provisioning tools, secure access and authentication tools, and
federated identity products," said Stahl, adding that if vendors
fail to communicate the value of identity management as individual
components, lower uptake in SMBs will continue.
Open source vendor Novell Inc. has been a dominant player in the
identity and access management space, reporting a revenue of US$63
million for the first quarter of 2006 from its system, security and
identity management products, an increase of 20 per cent
year-over-year from 2005.
Organizations are realizing the value of identity management,
specifically on workflow automation, said Kent Erickson,
vice-president and general manager for identity and resource
management and workspace solution, for Novell in Waltham, Mass.
He said customers are generally looking at efficiency around
single sign-on capabilities as an initial step towards identity
management.
"Once [customers] get a single sign-on solution they look at
ways to automate new stuff. So automated workflow is driving a key
interest right now," said Erickson.
At this week's BrainShare 2006 event in Salt Lake City, Novell
announced enhancements to its identity and access manager tool
dubbed Designer for Identity Manager, based on the Eclipse open
source framework. Designer allows users to customize, test, deploy
and document identity management implementation.
Large-scale deployment of identity and access management
technologies is seen in the healthcare, government and financial
services sectors, according to Loren Russon, director of product
management for Novell. He said this is mainly driven by regulatory
compliance initiatives.
While its adoption of identity management tools are driven
largely by data security and privacy requirements, the healthcare
sector is not particularly concerned whether the software is open
source-based or not, according to Info-Tech analyst Ross
Armstrong.
"Although a hospital might start shopping for an identity
management solution, the hospital probably doesn't care too much
whether or not the solution is based on open source software," said
Armstrong. "What's important to them is compliance with the
law."
Novell's Russon, however, maintained that when it comes to
identity management, integration is important and open source
initiatives would enable that.
He cited Project Higgins, an open source project initiated by
IBM Corp., which would develop the framework for developing
authentication and other identity management technologies.
"It's critical that the way identity (management) works is open
for everybody to participate," said Richard Whitehead, product
marketing director for Novell.
Whitehead explained that if a particular authentication tool
fails to provide the functionality the organization requires, it
would be able to go to another open source-based tool that can
provide the needed capability and, at the same time, work well with
the company's existing applications.
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