Burton Group Catalyst Conference

June 14 & 15, 2006

Day one of the Burton Conference held little to no surprises. As a caveat, I am spending my time in the "Identity *" track, so my observations will be heavily influenced by the information shared in those sessions.

By no surprises I mean that the keynote of the "Identity Management Landscape" session delivered by Jamie Lewis discussed all the expected areas that are covered within the I&AM umbrella: identity assurance and authentication, provisioning, role-based access control, federation systems, and application development. But wait, what about this concept of "User-centric ID management"? That's an interesting and somewhat new twist. More on that in another blog...

From what I could tell, everyone enjoyed the sessions which reviewed the I&AM landscape, identity assurance & strong identity, provisioning and identity frameworks delivered by Mike Neuenschwander and Mark Diodati, respectively. I would be remiss if I did not mention that one of the best case study presentations was delivered by Martin Vant Erve of TransCanada Pipelines. Sitting in the back of the room, it was enlightening to witness an engaged and genuinely interested audience of several hundred. I have mentioned in the past that one of the best features of the Burton Catalyst conference is the case studies delivered by organizations that have attempted and delivered on a project -- and this was a great example of that. Nice job Martin!

However, I have some bad news. Even though we are seeing many successful client deployments, standards that have matured, products that have matured, and deployment methodologies that have matured...in my opinion, this is still a very confusing and cluttered market. There has certainly been much consolidation, but there are still scores of non-platform "best of breed" vendors, as well as several niche players that are entering the market to fill a very specific gap, real or perceived. There are also the vendors delivering very similar (or exactly the same?) functionality to that of existing software products, but in hardware form. It is cluttered and confusing even for the most educated buyer. This view was corroborated at day one of the hospitality suites. It is at the suites that you see how the "bigger" and "smaller" vendors work together to solve a unique (?) and compelling (?) problem facing organizations looking to undertake an IdM or other type of project. Further, if you were to walk from suite to suite and read the high-level marketing messages, you could be forgiven for thinking that all the vendors are doing the exact same thing! How is that possible I wonder? How do you ever make sense of it as a buyer?

But wait, is this really bad news? This market attracts new vendors because it is *real*. The client problems are *real* and must be solved. The ROI achieved within enterprises after a successful deployment fuels further investment in the core businesses of our clients. The compliance achieved by enterprises that have deployed IdM solutions was not a "nice to have", but rather, a "must have" to continue to be a publicly-traded company and build investor value. Vendors are rushing to build the better, faster, and easier solution. This fuels creative thinking. This forces collaboration amongst the "giants" that would not necessarily happen otherwise. On the whole, we are moving in the right direction. We have "crossed the chasm" and, soon, the market will not be as cluttered. More small companies will be acquired; other vendors will throw in the towel and potentially divest themselves of technology and reinvent or refocus themselves. And you will see the usual suspects fighting it out for the IdM business that remains -- and they will undoubtedly continue to partner with niche vendors to help make their solutions more complete as well as differentiate themselves from their competition. Order will emerge from the chaos.

I wonder when that happens -- what then? Perhaps it won't be as much fun to be a vendor in this market? Since 2002, it has been a wild ride. Almost anyone who is, or has been in this industry will say that it has been quite an experience to have been a part of this wacky time. It was exhilarating if you were a struggling startup with conviction and belief and a never-say-die attitude. It was a rush as a mid-sized that either built or bought to offer a solution. I imagine it must have been fun even as an infrastructure player that heard the rumbling coming from this market (and saw the $$ being spent) and decided to step in and be a player -- generally via acquisition but occasionally the old fashioned way. And the camaraderie! We would bash other vendors over drinks, laugh at our competitors' hair-brained strategies, and be quite put-out if a valued partner wanted to work with another vendor. And what about all the spirited discussion of who was buying who? Come on, you know you did it too...

In any case, at the end of the day, I like to do a sanity check. Capitalism aside, am I *really* doing something good for society? Do the technologies we create and the solutions we deliver do anything but make money for technology vendors and consultants? I think listening to what organizations have done -- the answer is a resounding yes. Organizations are more secure, they are more efficient, and they are protecting very valuable personal identity information. They are able to offer solutions to consumers that simplify and/or enrich their lives. They are able to ease mundane and time-consuming tasks. If you don't believe me, let me leave you with one, very small, but very pertinent example.

I do online banking. I feel more secure doing online banking because I am offered the ability to strongly authenticate myself. I also know that my bank is using technology to ensure that they try to catch and stop fraud. As a result, I am comfortable doing almost all interactions with my bank online. That model works for me. I get to bank on my time, when it is convenient for me. It saves me time. It saves me stress. On average, over the course of a year, I will probably save anywhere from 30-60 hours because I don't have to actually go to a bank to do my banking. With that extra time I can: drive home to see my parents more, spend quality time with my spouse, read many books, volunteer at a boys and girls club, find time to work-out to keep my body healthy and my mind clear, stop to carry groceries for an elderly person, spend the extra time teaching a small child to read...you get the picture.

There is a good group of people in this industry, and I am proud to call myself a part of it all.

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