Immense growth opportunities in access management technology

The immense new growth opportunities in Identity and Access Management
Technology were discussed at the conference organized by analyst firm Frost
& Sullivan recently. Identity and access management is one of the fastest
growing areas in the security market. It is a process where all the different
elements or technologies that make up the solution play a key role in the
successful management of digital users or identities.

Despite the over hype that affected the growth of some related markets,
identity and access management technology is being widely implemented and growth
potential is still huge. However, the concept is not very clearly defined and
many vendors are adapting their marketing messages announcing a new positioning
as identity management providers.

Delivering his address, Alok Shende, Director-ICT Practice, Frost &
Sullivan said, “Identity and access management is a fast growing market and
has started showing signs of maturity. The idea of connecting organizations with
each other, allowing them to provision and de-provision users and share access
to critical applications is appealing but one with an obvious challenge-the
level of trust and privacy between partners. However, while people issues will
need to be properly addressed, the technology is already available and customers
are already taking advantage of it.”

The development of common standards and the uptake of other technologies such
as web services will allow the market to develop further and evolve into a
federated model. At the moment most of the solutions are developed for internal
users but businesses are likely to increase capabilities to third parties such
as customers and partners in the medium term.

“We are witnessing a lot of excitement around the identity and access
management (IAM) technology today. Enterprises are beginning to view IAM
solutions in the context of risk mitigation for their applications
infrastructure, and not as a standalone solution,” said R Dhamodaran, VP-ISV
and Developer Relations, IBM India.

Frost & Sullivan defines identity and access management as 'the process
of managing authentication, access rights, privileges and administration of
digital users.' As organizations open their networks to increasing numbers of
employees, customers and partners, they are faced with the challenge of
providing accounts to multiple users with the appropriate level of access to
applications and resources. As a result, large enterprises are beginning to
demand comprehensive identity and access management solutions that can provide
self-service to end users in a secure environment while addressing all aspects
of user administration, authentication and access control. Along with trust
building processes companies must take measures to secure parts of the network
to which third parties have access, to ensure that they themselves do not cause
security risk.

Federated identity management is a system that recognizes the fact that
individuals move between corporate boundaries at an increasingly frequent rate.
It allows individuals to use the same user name, password or other personal
identification to sign on to the networks of more than one enterprise in order
to conduct transactions.

In 2005, the Identity and access management world market was worth $1.63
billion, a growth of 25.2 percent compared to 2004. The market is expected to
reach 4.44 billion by the end of 2012, which represents a compound annual growth
rate of 15.4 percent. In 2005, the APAC market was worth $160.7 million, a
growth of 29.8 percent from $123.8 million in 2004. This region is expected to
reach $573.7 million by the end of 2012, which represents a CAGR of 19.9
percent. One of the areas of future development is identity federation.