Is the Sun Setting on IdM

I got a call from an old friend in India today and we were talking about the state of IdM on a global scale and since he travels every week around the APAC region, I wanted to see what his candid feedback was. In short:

'Sun is on its way out in over 12 accounts that I know of, being replaced by IBM and Oracle. Their projects are really going horribly.'

I asked him why and he replied:

'Because everyone looks at IdM as a technology project, not a business project and people just want to hook up connectors and think they're done'.

This confirms my position of 2 years that I learned with working on several projects at GE a few years ago - if you focus on the process you want and use the technology to enable that process, you'll do very well. Treat IdM like rolling out a new piece of technology and you would be better off donating the millions to charity.

I am sorry to hear that Sun is sucking wind right now. I always thought it was a decent product. I do not think it was sold correctly most of the time, and it took me 7 projects to figure out the right way to implement it, but I got there.

identitystuff@ gmail.com