Productivity was the big motivator

If you clicked the link to this page from the article titled Ease your identity management issues in IT World Canada, I wanted to provide a quick pointer to some of the content I *think* you might be interested in.

The link occurs in the line:

And while user productivity was the "big motivator" behind identity management strategies several years ago...

So, I think the writer may have read one of my previous posts which said:

Provisioning has typically been about increased efficiency and reduced cost. But, it's time to extend the ROI into security and compliance as well.

I expanded on the theme in a later post and then discussed the topic in an article on eBizQ.

You might notice that my ultimate conclusion is a little different than the one in the article. Here's the full paragraph from the IT World Canada article:

And while user productivity was the "big motivator" behind identity management strategies several years ago, it has now assumed a back seat as the rough economy has brought to the fore the need to reduce help desk and security administrative staff by automating previously manual user access processes, said Shohan. “People at least pay lip service to the idea of regulatory compliance and improving security, although I suspect in many cases, they… are really more interested in ROI and access termination,” he said.

So, it sounds like they're saying that the initial drivers for IAM were user-productivity and that has shifted to operational cost savings. In contrast, I would say that the initial driver was operational cost savings, it later included user-productivity, and now the shift is toward greater security and compliance / audit-ability.

In a completely separate post, I also talk about the difference between enabling end-user productivity in some SSO solutions and enabling security in others. ...perhaps that was the motivation for the link?

Either way, thanks to IT World Canada for the link!