Compliance and Identity Access Management applications will become CTO prerogative in investment - as enterprises prefer M&A over organic growth.
Talking to CXOtoday, Shree ParathSarathy, director, Deloitte, said when organizations are acquired, one has to go through the rigmarole of policies and authorization approvals to access data from other departments. This takes time and hence is a cost to the organization. IAM will help business heads to clearly see the demarcation of roles and will ensure security of authentication, authorization, accounting and auditing (AAAA), and hence can significantly reduce time to market (TTM).
Unlike the usual face-off between CTO and business heads, IAM deployment streamlines processes and roles within organizations, and enables business heads to streamline employee roles, allowing the CTO to manage risk of data.
Organizations are forced to share information with many partners, vendors, and consultants for business development. IAM applications have significant roles both in terms of IT and business as they help to monitor data and enable to comply with strict international regulations such as SOX, and GCC
When asked if IAM applications are a need only for large enterprises, Shree ParathSarthy said not necessarily. He cited telecom operators (medium and rapidly growing) in India add hundreds of subscribers each day, but their IT infrastructure is not fully robust to support their rapid user base growth.
Manish Malhotra, director & country head, (software, IDM), SUN, said that online companies (e-commerce) are now starting to collaborate with other online sellers to give their users a 'single stop shop' experience. Traditionally, the central data is shared when user navigates from parent site to the referred site to avoid re-verification. However, with IAM, the company can protect actual data and share only meta-data of the user.
SUN Federated Management allows transfers of meta-data, and ensures that identity of the user is not accessed by the referred site. Thus, even if the parent organization replaces the vendor, or the supplement service provider, the identity managed through IDM remains secure, and the data is inter-operateable with different systems - addressing flexibility in technology and business.
With mergers and acquisitions in the current economy, an organization's business heads and CTO will need to allocate budget for IAM, to improve op-ex and ensure business continuity.
