Identity Management – Vendor solution Vs OpenSource

January 12, 2010April 18, 2010 / prabasiva / 2 Comments

Identity management provides holistic solution for compliance, security requirements, and improve overall IT operation. Following are major vendors and their products providing IDM solutions in the market

– IBM/Tivoli Identity Management
– Oracle Identity Management (or Oblix/COREid/Thor)
– Computer Associates Identity Management (or Netegrity)
– MIIS (Microsoft Identity Integration Server or MMS (Microsoft Management Server) or Zoomit)
– SunOne Identity Management
– Novell Identity Manager
– BMC Identity Management (or Passlogix)

Before any organization implements IDM, it is best practice from program management office standpoint to develop a business case and return on investment.

How to create a measurable ROI for IDM investment?

If help desk operation is expensive in an organization, measurable ROI development is possible whereas if help desk operation is already lean, it is challenging to develop a TRUE ROI for IDM investment.

IDM solution provides holistic solution for compliance and security requirements. Even when there is no TRUE ROI for IDM investment, still it is worth considering IDM for its elegant user provisioning, user de-provisioning, user management, access management, password management, work flow, single sign on solutions.

The open source products OpenSSO, OpenDS (directory server) supported by SUN provides most cost ( total cost of ownership) effective solution among the solution landscape. Identity managers supported by SUN, which eventually will become an open source product provides all connectors to integrate various directory services and build work flow for custom provisioning and de-provisioning.

Message: If there is no TRUE ROI for IDM, consider OpenSSO/DS/Identity Manager solution before dropping IDM from your technology road map.

Note: This page is used for google’s page rank emprical analysis. The links will be created based on the random graph created. This is node #4 which has the key word: xysivabodzinyx , xysivabodzinxy . As per the graph, it links to page 3, page 5

Technical Architecture Components

October 24, 2009October 31, 2009 / prabasiva / 3 Comments

In general, infrastructure or data center cost is around 35-40% of an over all IT cost. Due to the high cost absorption in that area, it is prudent for any senior executive in the IT organization to have a better handle on the infrastructure cost. The industry lacks uniformity in the cost management of IT as a whole and it applies to infrastructure/data center cost. The various cost management structure are available to manage the over all IT cost and it depends on the size and type of an organization. However, the general principle remain the same.

IT infrastructure cost looked closely for IT cost optimization by every chief information officers. It is essential, particularly during this economical climate, to look the infrastructure cost distribution and study the alternative approaches for cost and competitive advantage. Chief Enterprise architects are directed by CIO and other senior executives to develop an IT infrastructure cost optimization program. To accomplish it, the enterprise architect must understand the high level information of various components of infrastructure and develop a technical architectural strategy. Technical architectural strategy defines the future state and provides a foundation, the blueprint, for the infrastructure/data centre cost optimization program.

For any future state analysis and definition, the current state is studied and understood before a road map is developed to reach the future state. 1. To study the current state, itemize the various components of technical architecture and the service rendered in each components.

Components of technical/infrastructure architecture

Hardware
- Servers
  - Distributed
    - WinTel
      - Linux
      - Windows
    - RISC
      - HP-UX
      - AIX
      - SGI
      - SUN Solaris
  - Mainframe
    - MVS
    - AS/400
- Disk arrays
  - SAN storage
  - NAS storage
  - Backup
- Network
  - Logical
    - Extranet
    - Internet
    - Intranet
  - Physical
    - Network Appliances (SSL accelerators, Net Cache devices, XML appliance)
    - Network devices (Routers, Switches, VPN devices, Hubs, Firewall, Wireless,Intrusion prevention)
    - Telephony devices (Dialer, ACDs, IVRs, PBX)
  - External Connectivity
    - SFTP drop box
    - VPN Tunnel
    - T1 line
    - ANX
    - OC3/5 internet connectivity
    - Frames/MPLS
- Desktop
  - PC
  - Laptop
  - Mobile devices (iPhone, BlackBerry, Smart Phones, pagers)
Software
- System Software
  - Server operating systems
  - Network operating system
  - Storage operating system
  - Desktop operating system
  - Compilers, Interpreters
  - File system management (VSAM, GFS )
  - Name resolution system (DNS)
  - Email servicing system (SMTP)
- Web infrastructure
  - Application Server
  - Web Server
  - Portal Server
- Data Administration
  - Database server – OnLine Transaction Processing (OLTP)
  - Data ware house
  - Reporting
  - Business Intelligence
- Office management
  - Microsoft Office/OpenOffice
  - Email client
  - Browser
  - Remote login
  - Security – Virus prevention
- Service Layer
  - Business process server
  - Message broker
  - Connector – database drivers, bridges,
- Monitoring and control management
  - Service monitoring
  - Device monitoring
  - Compliance management
    - Data Loss prevention
    - Login monitoring
- Collaboration Management server
- Document management server
- Storage Management Server
- Emergency Management Service
  - Disaster Recovery Management
  - Business continuity Management
- Enterprise Resource Planning (it will expand based on the core business)
  - Financials
    - Accounting
    - Management Accounting
      - Cash flow management
      - Fund flow management
  - HR
  - Procurement
Data center Services
- Power grid architecture
- Power Distribution Units (PDUs)
- Backup power –
  - Automatic generators
    - Cooling and backup cooling for generators
    - Fuel capacity and distribution management
- Cooling and heating
  - Backup cooling and heating
- Wiring management
- Rack management
- Physical security
Security Service
- Directory Services
- Identity Management Services
  - User provisioning
  - Authentication
  - Authorization
  - User management
  - User de-provisioning
- Network Security
- Intrusion prevention
- Firewall protection
- Layered protection
  - Zoning – web zone, app zone, database zone, messaging zone, Demilitarized zone, file exchange zone

The service offering in each area depends on an enterprise. Some enterprise has internal teams to provide all these services and some has outsourced all of them. Mostly, enterprises adopt a hybrid approach with both external service provider and internal teams. 2. Define the future state in terms of strategic objectives like IT simplification, cost optimization, adaptability, agility for new market segment and etc. 3. For each component of the infrastructure, perform a SWOT, cost and new solution analysis and define the road map.

Rapid Solution Delivery Framework

August 3, 2009August 3, 2009 / prabasiva / 1 Comment

In this tough economical situation, leading a multi-million, multi-year project to a failure is not an option for any corporation. Leaders or managers who lead project for years without successful implementation must be watched closely by the executive management for their performance during this economical situation. I totally understand an organization can learn from their mistakes, but successful organization learns from others mistakes but not on their own cost.

The project managers and leaders are seeking the best possible ways to ensure successful implementation in spite of any unforeseen hindrance in the execution. Even for the multi-million dollar projects utilizing the cost effectively solution are demanded. The project managers and leaders are seeking the best enterprise or system architect to provide solution to exceed customer expectation, meet requirements and at the same time provide most innovative and cost effective solution. Enterprise architects or system architects are required to have a set of tools in their arsenal to provide a rapid cost effective solution with highest possible success rate.

Rapid Solution Delivery Framework is an abstract concept used to rapidly define a cost effective and innovative solution. The key components of the framework are:

1. Cloud computing
2. Open source
3. Social network tools

Cloud computing: It addresses the rapid infrastructure setup or applicaton setup or business rules for any solution delivery. The cloud platform may come from external public cloud provider like Amazon or internal cloud provider or external private cloud provider (like secure24, rackspace for infrastructure) . It is rapid way of setting up the infrastructure for the solution delivery. There may be cases where cloud platform may also provide business solutions.

Open Source: There are lots of commercial software product companies leveraging the open source or supporting or sponsoring the open source to improve their commercial product quality tremendously. For instance, IBM supports Apache product development and leverages the Apache web server and bundles it as a IBM HTTP Server (I H S). The open source concepts are not pertained to system software. The open source concept proliferated to various segments and even in the chemical bonding structural analysis there are lots of open source tools available where the researchers and students easily learn and collaborate. Open source has become an integral of any IT solution delivery model. Open source provides wide range of solutions from operating system, system software (webserver, database server, application server), application development frameworks (spring, hibernate, struts), security (OpenSSO, Crowd, OpenLDAP) , application development IDEs (like eclipse, Galileo ) and etc. These open source products not only provide quality solutions but also provide cost effective solutions.

Social network tools: Social networking concepts and its implementation matured over the years and it is extensively being used beyond for personal use. There are major corporations like Cisco, Deloitte, IBM uses the social network tools for better collaboration among the employees to provide effective solutions to their clients. The tools landscape in the social network media is vast and deserves a separate blog. To name a few major categories like Video, Video Aggregation, documents, events, Wiki, LiveCasting, Pictures, social bookmarks, Crowdsourced content, blog and etc. There are at least 3-4 popular tools in each of those categories. The social networking technology landscape plays a vital role in leveraging existing solutions, collaborate better among various stakeholder of the projects.

Vivek Kundra implemented few projects in DC state government as a CTO are few practical examples how social networking platform provides a foundation for a rapid cost effective solution.

Along with these key components, depends on the business requirements, there may be other commerical products like SAP, or Flex (for UI) will be part of the over all IT solution.