Identity Management Cost Savings Quantified
Posted by Azeem Khan on Tue, Apr 21, 2009
IT managers and executives alike are seeking ways to not only cut costs but also to improve their business proceses. Replacing manual steps with automation can reduce time lost by administrators and employees alike.
Just think about the ammount of time tech support spends on changing passwords, or the ammount of time it takes an administrator to provision (create new accounts) for newly hired employees across multiple target systems. How about determining what accounts and permissions a new hire should get? That's right all of these things can be automated based on business rules. Not only is this really efficient, but it's a serious money saver.
The following is a typical cost savings example for an organizationwith 10,000 users:
| Total number of users: | 10,000 |
| Item | Current cost | Reduced cost | Notes |
| Productivity lost by new users waiting for access | $1,200,000 | $240,000 | 10% turnover, 5 days manual/1 day automated user creation, $60k/yr value of productivity. |
| Productivity lost by current users waiting for changes | $1,200,000 | $300,000 | 1 change/user/year, 4 hour wait time reduced to 1 hour. |
| Direct cost of security administration | $480,000 | $240,000 | 8 administrator FTEs reduced to 4. |
| Total | $2,880,000 | $780,000 |
| Total savings per year | | $2,100,000 |
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