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Approaches to IDaaS for Enterprise Identity Management

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Happy New Year 2010 to all. Best wishes in the year that just starts.

I will start this year's first posting by acknowledging Burton Group's (just acquired by Gartner) Bob Blakley September 30^th, 2009 vantage point titled: "2010 Identity and Privacy Strategies Planning Guide: A Market in Transformation", which has been an excellent reference in helping me shape some of my thoughts for this article. I think it is a great document with great insights on current trends in identity management.

My prior blog posting introduced a definition for Identity as a Service (IDaaS), setting the stage for this posting, which discusses models for deploying IDaaS, from the perspective of the entity that consumes the Identity service, in this case an organization (as opposed to an individual). The assumption will be that the entity and the service provider are two separate organizations, and moreover, two separate legal entities. In a way, this perspective is no other than the Enterprise identity management.

In addition, for this discussion, we will try not differentiating the kind of Identity services being provided (provisioning, registration, authentication, etc.), or which user population within the entity it is intended (i.e. employees, contractors, suppliers, customers or business partners). The idea is that the approaches should be applicable to all of them.

Defining Managed IDaaS

In this article's context, Managed IDaaS is an approach to IDaaS in which the entity employs one or more separate legal entities as service providers. The service provider is contractually bound to specific terms that define how the service is performed, and it governs its adherence to these terms through mutually agreed and measurable service level agreements (SLAs). In other words, Managed IDaaS, is the scenario in which an organization consumes Identity services from an external service provider. These services can range from operating a provisioning infrastructure, to verifying the identity of a person, to providing strong authentication or federated authentication credentials, to managing passwords;  and they can be provided both internally (i.e. within the organizations Intranet) or externally (i.e. through an extranet portal), and can physically reside on-premise or in the cloud, or a combination thereof.

Two main variants of Managed IDaaS are common today, and as Gartner forecasted, they should trend upwards in adoption within the next two years. They are mainly determined by who is responsible for and who owns what part of the Identity service infrastructure, which in many cases correlates directly to where the infrastructure component actually resides:

• Cloud IDaaS - where the service provider owns and operates the entire Identity service infrastructure, and provides it to the entity in a pure SaaS manner, without any sort of footprint or backend integration with the entity's IT infrastructure. Identity information is exchanged in an offline (manual or batched) manner.
• Co-sourced IDaaS - using Wikipedia's definition of co-sourcing, this is an approach in which the Identity service interacts directly or through some technical footprint with the entity's IT backend infrastructure (directories, repositories and other target systems). The entity and the service provider have a shared responsibility for building and operating the Identity service, the balance of this responsibility determines distinct scenarios, which we will focus in more detail in this article.

To better understand Managed IDaaS, it is useful to decompose it into building blocks. The diagram on the left provides a high-level structure for an Identity service, made up by three main functional areas:

Consumable Identity Service - this is the end point of the service, which interacts and integrates with the consuming entity, whether an end user interacting through a web UI or an application or repository that exchanges information with the service. This is the area in which the specific logic and functionality provided by the service is actually "wired".

Identity Management Stack - this is the middleware of the service; the software modules that provide the basic functionality to manage and process identity information.  The diagram shows an arbitrary sample of the software components that make up the identity management stack. It is not mean to be an exhaustive list, but rather a representative sample. Nishant Kaushik has done a great job explaining the identity services framework, which instantiate the identity management stack.

IT Platform - this is the technical backbone of the service. The basic IT computing infrastructure that is not specific to identity management, but generic to any IT service.

These three basic functional areas are useful in explaining how variants of a Managed IDaaS come to life, particularly co-sourced IDaaS.

Co-Sourced IDaaS

It is a Managed IDaaS variant in which the Identity service's consumable service interacts directly with backend (or back office) IT infrastructure managed and operated by the entity. And more importantly, one in which the entity and service provider enter into a partnership in which they share some of the responsibility in building, hosting or operating the Identity service.

The diagram below illustrates four common co-sourced IDaaS scenarios, which we'll discuss next. I admit that while I have spent time thinking about these scenarios, I do not think I have articulated them in a way that clearly delineates their boundaries (if any), so I am hopeful that by venting them out, I will get very good thoughts from you.

1. All on-premise, provider operated - when the entity owns the identity management stack used to build the service, as well as the actual IT platform; and the Identity service is hosted on the entity's premise where it integrates directly with the entity's backend IT systems in the Intranet. The service provider is responsible for configuring and operating the consumable Identity service. This model is a more "traditional" Enterprise identity management deployment approach, where an organization procures the entire IT stack, and hires an external integrator to build, and possibly operate the Identity service, according to defined requirements. The organization and the integrator establish service agreements which govern roles, responsibilities, response times, escalation procedures and son on.
2. Provider hosted and operated - where the service provider hosts and runs the entire Identity service, and integrates directly with the entity's consuming backend IT systems. This scenario is seen often at organizations that outsource their IT infrastructure and operations to an IT outsourcing service provider, and the Identity services are collocated and dedicated to the organization. From a connectivity perspective, the Identity services are typically accessed via dedicated lines (private clouds, private VPN). In this scenario, the service provider is often responsible for procuring and operating the consumable Identity service, the identity management stack and the IT platform. The outsourcing service provider and the organization establish service level agreements as well as licensing agreements which ensure that the organization is entitled to use the technology infrastructure require for the Identity service. This scenario is typically single tenant for both the consumable Identity service and the identity management stack functional areas.
3. Hybrid: on-premise and in the cloud - where the service provider hosts and runs the entire Identity service in an environment hosted in the cloud, and requires some technology footprint to be deployed on-premise at the entity's IT environment to effect the integration with its backend IT systems. The scenario is one where the organization "leases" the Identity service from the service provider, which includes the use of the on-premise footprint - say a virtual or physical appliance, and access to the actual Identity service which is hosted in the cloud. From a connectivity standpoint, the appliance provides secure communication through the public Internet, and it may also provide caching and queuing to increase the reliability and responsiveness of the service. The service provider owns and runs the Identity service backbone and may adopt a multi-tenant model. The organization and provider agree to service SLAs, which will also govern how the on-premise footprint is operated.
4. All in the cloud - where the service provider hosts and runs the entire Identity service in an environment hosted in the cloud and it integrates with the entity's backend IT systems without requiring additional technical footprint, leverage secure, open standards-based interfaces over the public Internet. In this case, the organization "leases" the Identity service from the service provider, and configures its backend IT systems to communicate directly with the service. The provider owns and runs the Identity service backbone and will most likely adopt a multi-tenant model. The organization and service provider agree to SLAs under an Application Service Provider model.

In future postings, we will discuss considerations and advantages of the co-sourced IDaaS model. In the meantime, I look forward to your comments.

Defining Identity as a Service

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In the midst of the holiday season, and with the anticipation and emotion that comes with the end of the year approaching, I have decided to write my first blog - an early new year's resolution perhaps. I must state that I have resisted the urge to blog for the last three years of my career for two reasons: on one end, I feared starting to blog and then dropping off and being inconsistent (just like I have been every time I started at the gym), on the other end, I dreaded becoming addicted to blogging and seeing it impact other priorities. But let's just say that I am resolved to give this a good try by sticking to some basic rules: keep the content lean but meaty, keep a constant blogging frequency, and try to be as interactive as feasible - sounds simple. Let's see how I fare (maybe I will also get in shape in the process)...

What is Identity as a Service (IDaaS)?

2009 has seen an increased interest and focus in a relatively new topic in identity management "Identity as a Service (IDaaS)", but just like any upcoming trend, it tends to be understood differently, explained differently and used differently depending on context. Burton Group provides a very concrete definition that focuses on the outsourcing of identity management, such as authentication, provisioning and attributes services. Dave Kearns has covered this topic extensively as well, under the context of "Externalizing Identity into the Cloud". My friend Nishant Kaushik defined the term in 2007 as "the notion of making identity management capabilities available as an infrastructure service to all applications in a SOA environment".

In a way, this reminds of the late 90's when the term identity management was making its foray in the world (yes I admit that I was an identity guy back then - lucky me!), and everyone had its own definition and everybody from Dun & Bradstreet to Access360 to Oblix provided identity management. And I think that the term is still misinterpreted today, though not entirely misunderstood, just like any normal teenager at this age.

So, one would wonder: why propose yet another definition for IDaaS? Well, I encourage you to keep on reading, as I think I will make my point clear, and hope to ignite good comments and discussion along the way.

With that: what is IDaaS? It is an approach to digital identity management in which an entity (organization or individual) relies on a service provider to make use of a specific functionality that allows the entity to perform an electronic transaction which requires identity data managed by the service provider. In this context, functionality includes but is not limited to registration, identity verification, authentication, attributes and their lifecycle management, federation, risk and activity monitoring, roles and entitlement management, provisioning and reporting. 

The relevance, or perhaps novelty, of this definition, is that it focuses on the interaction of four elements: the entity, the service provider (which could be the entity in some cases), the specific functionality and the electronic transaction.

The Context of IDaaS

I believe that IDaaS as a concept has seen increased interest and coverage this year, in big part due to the impact of the global economic challenges which are forcing organizations to revisit its models for adopting and implementing IT initiatives that require identity management, as well as an increased emphasis in regulatory compliance and privacy awareness.

In any case, there are some important considerations regarding the definition of IDaaS that I would like to point out:

• It is not meant to be just a technical definition. And while the definition does not conflict (I would hope) with a technical definition or architectural approaches, it is important to think about IDaaS from a legal and jurisdictional standpoint as well. In this context, the definition of ownership, responsibilities and liabilities is significant to all parties involved in IDaaS. Tom Smedinghoff, a well-known contributor to the identity management industry, has created great content and led several initiatives that are bringing the legal aspect of digital identity management at par with its technical evolution, all of which is relevant to adopting IDaaS.
• The strength, rigorousness and thoroughness by which IDaaS is provided, should be measurable in an objective and demonstrable way, such that they can convey a specific level of confidence or assurance to the parties. This in turn will translate to a risk mitigation level that the parties can agree to be sufficient for a specific type of transaction. The Identity Assurance Certification Program run by the Kantara Initiative provides a very concrete vehicle to achieving this measurement.
• IDaaS should not be restricted or misconstrued as only applying to "cloud" based models. While IDaaS is particularly relevant for cloud-based services, IDaaS could also apply to on-premise models. In fact, I argue that it is in this area where the definition is most beneficial, as organizations can view its internally-facing (and possibly internally deployed) identity management infrastructure as identity services, allowing the demarcation of service scope and boundaries that will make outsourced, on-premise, cloud-based models or any combination therein more concrete, and easier valuate in business terms. The intention is not to confuse IDaaS with "Cloud Identity" or with "outsourced identity management", since the term could apply to all these cases.
• The concept should also not be restricted to enterprise IDaaS vs. consumer IDaaS, since the notion is basically the same. Evidently, the actors, the types of transactions, the levels of sensitivity in them, and other elements will vary greatly from enterprise to consumer environments, but the notion of how digital identity management applies to each could be thought of in the context of IDaaS.

Why is this even relevant?

My motivation to introduce this definition at this point is to attempt to set a common understanding of terms, allowing us to better understand the new trends, services and paradigms in identity management that are unraveling before our eyes. As I believe that a significant shift in identity management from a monolithic model to a true services-based infrastructure, has been at play for the past 2 years, with noticeable effects only in the past 6 months.

With this shift has come some degree of confusion in the industry among identity management in the context of cloud-based services (i.e. SaaS, Infrastructure as a service), identity federation (claims or assertion based) and the more traditional enterprise deployment models, to a point where they are at times seen as independent or separate; causing people to think of IDaaS as not relevant to the enterprise facing environment or mystifying it as another "cloud" term. And in some unfortunate instances this confusion has impacted the way an organization looks at implementing an identity management solution (either by limiting the range of options that it could look at or by widening it to include the wrong set of options).

I intend to demystify this concept a bit more in subsequent blogs, and attempt to bring more pragmatism around it by explaining how it applies to concrete scenarios. In the meantime, I appreciate your comments and reactions.

Identropy's Identity Management Solutions 101 Series

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Our goal is to keep you informed and highly educated on identity management solutions, trends and business.

Identity Management Solutions 101: User Provisioning 

Identity Management Solutions 101: Password Management 

Identity Management Solutions 101: Enterprise Single Sign-On 

Identity Management Solutions 101: IaaS (Integration as a Service)  

Stay tuned for more sessions about topics such as Deprovisioning, Cloud Computing, SOA and others.

Identity Management Solutions 101: IaaS (Integration as a Service)

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You know that something is new when it is listed in Wikipedia but still is not clearly defined.

Wikipedia says, “The origin of the terminology "Integration as a Service" is not clearly defined. However "IaaS" is becoming widely used in reference to Software as a Service.”

Companies like Bluewolf and Identropy are paving the way towards defining and implementing IaaS.

"Integration software has become a commodity," said Lou Fox, CTO of Bluewolf.  "We focus on making sure you are successful with integration by wrapping in monitoring, maintenance, enhancements and consulting into our Integration-as-a-Service offering so that clients can get a complete solution, not just a tool."

Ash Motiwala, CTO of Identropy has said, “Identity Management lends itself perfectly for Integration as a Service since the true goal of bringing these products in to any environment is reducing costs. The next way to continue reducing those operating costs is by providing support on those integrated systems.”

In my opinion, technology has progressed from the normal implementations, to the much lesser known Identity as a Service (which was popular about a year ago but really never caught on because it is what all implementers were already doing) to Integration as a Service (which provides the greatest value and return on investment for an organization).

So if I were to define IaaS, I would define it as a solution that combines consulting services and implementation of identity solutions coupled with a proactively managed and integrated support service.

In future posts we will dive further into Identropy’s IaaS solution iMIS (Identropy Managed Identity Service) http://www.Identropy.com/Products_iMIS/.

Doing It First in Identity Management

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I am so amazed when I ask myself "how did that guy do it first?". If you think about it aren't you shocked when you think about the first guy that said to himself I am going to eat that octopus or that oyster...I mean if you have ever seen an octopus or oyster you would say how do you eat that? It really doesn’t look like one of the more edible things out there but guess what it’s a delicacy (of course not for me because I’m allergic…so if you ever take me out to dinner skip the seafood).

That brings me to the thought of how many firsts do you get in this day and age and I must say that the list of firsts is getting shorter and shorter. Only the really smart guys are producing those firsts. I guess that Innovators will do things first. SAAS "software as a Service" and Cloud Computing seem to be the last couple of firsts that I have seen and I must say they are exciting and innovative but what’s next and who is going to do it.

I don’t think that I will have to go too far to find out who will be the next top innovator. Identropy was mentioned in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant as an Innovator and has consistently produced technology to improve the identity space.

What have we done recently to get on this list? IAAS “Integration as a Service” which has been achieved through the inception of iMIS “Identropy Managed Identity Service”.

Stays tuned for more briefs or take a look at it on http://www.Identropy.com/Products_iMIS/