April 26, 2007

SUN is POSITIVE on Gartner's scale


Its certainly a moment of joy, when Gartner has listed SUN as an overall POSITIVE. These days still, there are people who talk a little bit against the Identity Manager product of SUN. There is a wonderful response to such opinions out there @ http://blogs.sun.com/superpat/entry/sun_identity_manager_comes_out

However, I couldn't resist picking up a comparison sheet from the same blog, for people who however couldn't navigate to the link. It's a thorough comparison of products from six vendors - Courion, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Sun and Thor/Accelerate.

April 18, 2007

10 most Important people in the Identity Space

One of my friends, Subhash Nukala, working for PwC, UK wrote a comment on my article on IdM. I felt, the comment should be actually highlighted rather than just being left out as a comment. Thus publishing the same here which describes the ten most important personalities in the Identity Management Space. The same can be found out @ http://blogs.zdnet.com/digitalID/?p=24

Few of my blogs may contain few ideas common to some other blogs published elsewhere before, however, there are good number of people who come here who don't know about those :-)
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The topic of the “10 most important people” in the identity space came up the other day, and it got me to thinking. Accordingly, I put together my list:

1. Jamie Lewis, CEO, Burton Group: Jamie is always at the top of his game; staying on top of identity trends. In addition, he and Craig Burton wrote the original whitepaper outlining the concept of a “meta-directory” - which essentially gave birth to the identity industry.

2. Kim Cameron, Architect for Identity, Microsoft: Besides building a meta-directory that Microsoft bought (now Active Directory), Kim started the “Laws of Identity” conversation that has resulted in InfoCards in Vista, and multiple conversations around “user-centric” identity.

3. Sara Gates, VP of Identity, Sun Microsystems: I’m pinpointing Sara, but this is really aimed at the entire Waveset team (which was acquired by Sun). That acquisition (and the people that came with it) was a turning point in Sun’s identity management business.

4. Michael Barrett, ex-President of The Liberty Alliance: Michael shepherded Liberty through its early years and represents all of that early, hard work that came out of Liberty and directly contributed to SAML2.0 - which became a point of convergence that accelerated all federated identity initiatives.

5. OASIS, standards body: Alright, so its not really a person, but when a standard comes out of OASIS (be it WS-Security or SAML) it gets traction, and identity would not be where it is today without them.

6. Mike Beach, Boeing: Mike was one of the earliest adopters of SAML, but that’s not why Mike is on this list. Mike is here to represent all of the engineers working inside of the enterprise that slave away day after day trying to make all of this identity “stuff” work.

7. Regulators and Legislators: Again, not a single person, but a group of people. Whether its the FFIEC (with their guidance for online authentication in a banking or brokerage context), or Congress (with the requirements of SOX and GLB), these folks drive identity technology forward, even if unknowingly.

8. The “little guys”: By “little guys,” I mean all of the smaller companies and developers that are out there innovating in one way or another. This list is long (and this is not inclusive): Sxip, Johannes Ernst, A10, Identity Engines, Trusted Network Technologies, Applied Identity, InfoExpress, Prodigen….it goes on and on.

9. The Kid in Nebraska: He’s probably 17 or 18, and he doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going to come up with the identity *application* that the entire world adopts.

10. The Readers of Digital ID World: Okay, this is as much a “thank you” as anything. We’ve been doing this since 2002, and without our readers (vendors, enterprises and individuals) we wouldn’t know anything.

That’s my Top 10 Most Important Pepole in Identity. So tell me, who did I miss?

April 17, 2007

Different Mindsets

Today, someone posted a comment on my blog related to "Identity Management". The comment was ... " get a life dude.....we know u copied all tht frm google.. ". First of all I am very thankful to that Anonymous person, that he was here.

This unfortunately is the mindset of people. I was wondering about Mr/Miss Anonymous's knowledge on IdM and their understanding about my experience in the same. Anyway, if you Anonymous reading this, please let me know your email, I would mail to you. I am a person who believes seriously in science and thus believe in discussing things, rather than just airing out opinions.

April 11, 2007

What Precisely is Identity Management?


“The human experience of IDENTITY has two elements: a sense of belonging and a sense of
being separate.” - Salvador Minuchin, 1974

Identity management technology is ideally suited to automating processes that enable Sarbanes Oxley compliance. It specifically addresses security processes associated with establishing “adequate internal controls” around financial reporting, as required by SOx section 404(a). By mapping these processes as well as internal security policies to automated identity management, enterprises can leverage highly efficient and cost-effective technology frame-works for improving security and ensuring compliance. In addition, the right identity management solution can bring about greater operational efficiencies in general, and provide a significant return on investment for the enterprise.

Drivers for Identity Management
• Organizational Efficiency. Enable transactions and person-to-person communication.
• Competitive Advantage. Capturing new or larger shares of markets and enhancing company position against competitors.
• Security. Enable authorized access and prevent unauthorized access to information and services
• Speed of Reaction to Change. Mergers, reorganizations, departmental moves.
• Fraud Prevention. Hard to quantify, but can clearly provide major savings.
• Consistent Treatment of the Individual. “End-to-end” management of employees, “single view of the customer,” “joined-up government.”
• Integrated Information Infrastructure. Enable move away from “information silos” and “IT-processing chimneys.”

Real world Examples:
An Indian Office of a top US company, paid salary continously for six months after an employee left the organization.

In one of my previous organization's, the email id of my colleague who left the company existed for almost eight months after he left.

Similarly, in every organization, the current approaches to User/Identity management are crude and fail to provide complete security. A one time Provisioning and one time deprovisioning of identities, with complete auditing facilities for every account created or deleted will be the better solution for the existing problems. This is nothing but Identity Management.

This Domain majorly is composed of the following technologies/domains

1. LDAP/Databases
2. Identity Management
3. Access Management
4. Federation

Product Companies:
The top company for IdM, not to boast but a fact is SUN Microsystems. To see the players in the IdM market and thier positioning, try to google for "Gartner's Magic quadrant for User Provisioning".

I shall try to provide some slides in the near future on the same topics. Meanwhile, enthusiasts are request use the most powerful knowledge tool - GOOGLE.

April 7, 2007

Why India is still a developing country?

This article came as a email forward to me. I couldn't resist myself posting it here.

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house. Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other grasshoppers demanding that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter. Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper. The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance) . Opposition MP's stage a walkout.Left parties call for "Bharat Bandh" in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers.

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act [POTAGA]", with effect from the beginning of the winter.

Arjun Singh makes Special Reservation for Grass Hopper in educational Insititutions & in Govt Services.

The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it "a triumph of justice". Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice'. CPM calls it the 'revolutionary resurgence of the downtrodden' Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.

Many years later...The ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi billion dollar company in silicon valley.100s of grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India ...

As a result of loosing lot of hard working ants and feeding the grasshoppers India is still a developing country .....

April 4, 2007

Indians (almost) never Change

Note: I accept, myself, I am certainly not completely perfect.

I have been pondering since years if most of my country men, could every be more courteous in the way they behave with one another, understand their limits, talk properly, interact, be open minded? However, its been long I have been craving for such an environment, where its utopia. Finally I joined SUN Microsystems. I was wondering about the environment I am going to get and expected a lot.

However, Indians are Indians. I still find the following even here.

1. They pull out chairs at your table, even without asking you
2. They stand next to your cubicle and start shouting over their phones without even bothering about others
3. People group at cubicles and start jokes, babble and very ugly is they start speaking aloud in thier regional languages.
4. Latest incident: My colleague, kept a cup of tea, in the microwave for heating. A lady came, pulled her cup out and heated her cup of tea and then kept the cup back and left. I cant even describe what an action this is.

Can we ever ever change???????

My Visit to Symbiosis


Its a moment of pride. I was invited by Symbiosis Center for IT, to deliver a lecture on Identity and Access Management. I was delighted about it. I was there on 31st March at SCIT, Pune. Spoke about almost every piece of detail related to IdM. However, as everyone understands, IdM is all about compliance and talking rules, especially listening such stuff, you know becomes boring. I am sure the students were a little bit patient to hear all that.

However, it was a great feeling, to lecture at a place, where I was a student longtime back. Hope to have such many other momentous occassions.