Four Generations of MacAuley Clan See Red Sox Win World Series

Here is another bit of trivia for all you Identitystuff fans out there - Four generations of my family have been alive to see the redsox win the World Series twice in their lifetimes.

My grandmother, Mary, who passed away in 2005 days after meeting my 3 week old daughter for the first time was born the same year as Fenway Park - 1912. She saw the last World Series win of the Red Sox (Prior to the 2004 win) in 1918, and was alive and well, and wide awake in Maine at the end of the Winning Game in 2004.

My Dad and my Uncle were the second generation to see them win twice as did me and my son (who was born February 2004 and was wearing Red Sox stuff in her first days of life) in 2004 and 2007 respectively.

Four generations, two World Series, one team - The Boston Red Sox.

Just for the record, it has also been four generations who believe that the Yankees Suck...

The Identity of a Nation...

Those of you who know me, know how much of a Boston Red Sox fan I am. I watch over 100 games in the regular season, and have seen all the games in the post season thus far. Last nights win to send the Red Sox to the World Series was awesome. It was 11:54 PM with Papelbon on the mound and shutting down the Tribe, with some help from Coco Crisp slamming into the same wall Johnny Damon did to make the game ending catch.

So to those of us who are part of the Red Sox Nation, we don't need identity cards, biometrics, or poorly designed provisioning processes to help us define who we are. We know. And we know we actually have a shot at taking the World Series this year.

I am proud to say that if the Red Sox puu it out, there will be 4 generations of Red Sox fans who have seen them win twice (my Grandmother, who passed away after the 04 win and meeting her great grand-daughter, my dad and uncle, me, and my son) in their lifetime. The profoundness of that statement has me reaching for a box of Kleenex.

GO SOX!!!!!!!

Identity Management as a Service

Having been in both the IdM space and the services world for some time, a convergence of discussion topics happened this past week via email when I was thinking about IdM as a service and asking myself, why doesn't somebody do this for a living?

Someone sent me an email asking if I knew of anyone doing this and it got me into a what-if thought parade… What if IdM could be offered as a service? Would it be an elephant or a dumptruck?

My thoughts:

The service’s value would really be in BPR (Business Process Reengineering) since we are talking about streamlining the process by which access to assets is given.

The first part of the service would be a BPR Mapping session – map out what it is you want a process to look like. NOT what the process is and NOT what one group thinks it is (a really cool project with a lot of buzz). Lay out the best possible process. Period.

Then what?

Then you have to look at ways of validating identity. What parts are manual (Are you who you say you are at the other end of the phone)? What parts are automatic (LDAP?)?

Identify what people need access to by macro groups. Is this enough?

Identify what people need access to in micro groups. Is this enough?

Identify the small group of users (Roots) who get access to a lot of stuff, or the keys to the kingdom.

Install software solution(s) to manage and enforce what you’ve identified

Then identify how to un-engineer the process. Does it work? How quickly?

Continually audit to determine how well it works or doesn’t work.

What’s your service offering? An elephant or a dumptruck?