Identity Management HD: The Trends and Shifts Driving Identity Management Software Innovation

Identity management holistic definition.

Recently Avatier’s CEO, Nelson Cicchitto, delivered a presentation at the HDI Conference and Expo 2013 covering the operational and cultural mega trends driving innovation for the next generation of identity management software. The implications on the evolution of IT operations are significant and imminent.

So what are these critical macro trends percolating in the marketplace around identity and access management and access governance? How will these mega trends affect your IT management processes in the short and long term? In his presentation, Nelson outlined the following four phenomena changing IT organizations:

1. Applications in the cloud will continue to deliver great benefits to IT organizations across industries and enterprises. The speed and simplicity of cloud implementation and maintenance will streamline IT operations, reduce costs and improve information security. Within the identity intelligence marketplace, cloud-enabled identity management software along with actionable IT service catalogs clearly represents the wave of the future.
2. Facilities reduction and physical access controls will cause exponential complexity for IT organizations. When companies reduce office capacity, business users in turn work remotely often using their own equipment. If you’re not set up to support business users in their home offices, your organization will buckle as this pool of workers grows. And, if your company — like most — has installed physical access controls, you know that these “solutions” can significantly increase your help desk call volume.
3. BYOD, or “bring your own device”, will further complicate identity management. The proliferation of smart phones, tablets and other personal devices in the workplace will create an identity management quagmire with huge impact on IT management protocols. The implications around safeguarding information security, user provisioning and password management will quickly significantly burden IT resources, its strategic focus and operational effectiveness.
4. Automation will fundamentally change the role of the IT function in organizations across the board. According to a report drafted by Jean-Pierre Garbani titled “Develop A Strategy To Transform Your IT Infrastructure And Operations Practice” published by Forrester in March, 2013, more tech-savvy business users and increased operational complexity will render the traditional IT function obsolete. The trending around self-service group management and automated user provisioning, access certification and IT risk management means issues that today mandate a call to the help desk will tomorrow be solved by business users themselves without involving IT call center support staff.

So where does this leave you? In a great place to get out ahead of the trends impacting identity management and build a plan for your organization’s next generation identity management solution.

At Avatier we take a business-driven view on identity and access management. We look at identity management‐ user provisioning, access governance, risk management and self-service password management are all important pieces of a unified identity management framework.

To learn more about Avatier’s identity management solutions watch the Gwinnett Medical Center user provisioning and password reset case customer case study.

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Learn the future of identity management and how IT automation combined with self-service administration create competitive advantage. KuppingerCole’s Assignment Management — Think Beyond Access describes the IT shift from tightly controlled identity management processes to more open business user administration.