Fries or Baked potato? I think I'll have the Bruschetta
I recently had two discussions with two very different organizations about identity management. One was a global wired/wireless telecom provider and the other was a State government.
Ice cream and dump trucks from a similarity perspective, but my answer to them was the same – it’s all about the process. What was the question? It was:
Should we use Sun Identity manager or IBM’s Tivoli Identity Manager?
Why was my answer the same for both organizations? Because one of the two most important parts of an IdM deployment – the business process that will be enabled by the technology – directly impacts the ultimate success of a project.
Do you *really* think it matters what product you use? They both do the same thing at the end of the day, and it *really* doesn’t matter what product you use. Maybe if you spend $100M with IBM every year you’ll get a better price, but functionally they are basically the same.
They are the same in another way too – if you screw up figuring out the business process and focus on the as-is process and implement how things work today, then you will have a broken business process enabled by a shiny new piece of expensive software that may impress your peers, but will give your CFO heartburn, and let’s face it – that’s not good.
Spend your money on someone who understands process and will help you defend it, vs. someone who can tell you how different the feature sets are.
So if I should be asked again – what would you use - _______________ Identity management Solution or _____________________ identity management solution? My answer will be the same – how well is your process defined?
Extra credit - Anyone care to venture what the other most important part of an identity implementation is? Answer in my next blog entry…
Ice cream and dump trucks from a similarity perspective, but my answer to them was the same – it’s all about the process. What was the question? It was:
Should we use Sun Identity manager or IBM’s Tivoli Identity Manager?
Why was my answer the same for both organizations? Because one of the two most important parts of an IdM deployment – the business process that will be enabled by the technology – directly impacts the ultimate success of a project.
Do you *really* think it matters what product you use? They both do the same thing at the end of the day, and it *really* doesn’t matter what product you use. Maybe if you spend $100M with IBM every year you’ll get a better price, but functionally they are basically the same.
They are the same in another way too – if you screw up figuring out the business process and focus on the as-is process and implement how things work today, then you will have a broken business process enabled by a shiny new piece of expensive software that may impress your peers, but will give your CFO heartburn, and let’s face it – that’s not good.
Spend your money on someone who understands process and will help you defend it, vs. someone who can tell you how different the feature sets are.
So if I should be asked again – what would you use - _______________ Identity management Solution or _____________________ identity management solution? My answer will be the same – how well is your process defined?
Extra credit - Anyone care to venture what the other most important part of an identity implementation is? Answer in my next blog entry…
posted by Mark Mac Auley at 6/25/2007
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1 Comments:
Here here, but you must have a skilled, experienced Solutions Design Architect to bring process into play. Solutions Design Architecture must know how to exploit the product features to deliver the business processes. A good overall design to meet all the business process is key to an Identity Management solution for the business, be it a state government department or a telcom provider.
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