IAM Maturity and product selection

I have just completed a product selection exercise with a customer who has past experience of a failed solution with one of the Big Vendor products. In doing this I found it useful to refer to the Gartner IAM Maturity Model, because what is the use of fancy (/expensive) features if you don’t actually have…

Realms of Integration

This is a slightly updated picture from one I posted on twitter the other day. It’s an attempt to express my general view on high level “should be possible” integration conversations that get misunderstood as “clearly simple and straightforward and definitely happening”. In my mind I’m arguing against tightly-coupled integrations between disparate systems that do…

The perils of HR out-sourcing to an IAM solution

Over the years, I’ve been called in a few times when HR and/or payroll functions are being outsourced (or share-serviced, which is much the same thing), and this includes a migration to a new HR platform. Typically I have been brought in far too late in the proceedings when cost-cutting and service-simplification decisions have already…

How IDAM solutions cost you money

Anyone who’s been in the IDAM game for a while knows that IDAM solutions are hard to sell. We can be seen as pushing something customers “already have” – even though what they already have is a combination of manual process, scripts, inconsistent data and a tangled web of access “control” that no one really…

Portrait of a MIM project

I recently deployed a MIM 2016 solution into Production that took about 10 months to build, test and deploy. I decided to take a look at the percentage of overall time spent on broad work categories in the whole project, and that’s what this post is about. First I had to get the data on…

Role Mining, and why it’s a fantasy

Over the years I’ve had a play with a few role mining tools, and while I can’t claim that as any type of industry review, it did leave me with a general feeling that the whole concept is a fantasy. The main problem I have is that role mining assumes there is a logical structure…

It always comes back to Requirements

I’m just going to say it – many people in IT don’t give enough thought to requirements. They might think they do, there may even be a document with the word “Requirements” in the title, but are they good enough for the job?

Pre-wired access control

Here’s a picture I once used in a presentation (credited to wallwin.ca) to illustrate the mess access control in directories and applications often looks like when you try and do any kind of review and analysis. These days I don’t go into server and patch rooms all that often, but even so it’s been a…

Why I care so much about identity data quality

I feel like I’m always trying to convince people that the quality and maintence of identity data is important and worth putting effort into, while they nod and say “sure, sure”, while thinking “this crazy lady knows nothing about reality”. But you know what? I’m not crazy – and here are some reasons why.

Busy year

I’ve really been neglecting this blog this year. After averaging two posts a month over the previous 8 years of this blog (yes it really has been that long – started May 2007), 2015 just hasn’t been much of a blogging year so far. Partly that’s because of the FIM Team User Group – with…