One of the slides I use most frequently these days is about Identity Brokers or Identity Fabrics, that manage the access of everyone to every service. This slide is based on recent experience from several customer advisories, with these customers needing to connect an ever-increasing number of users to an ever-increasing number (and complexity) of services, applications, and systems.
This reflects the complex reality of most businesses. Aside of the few “cloud born” businesses that don’t have factory floors, large businesses commonly have a history in their IT. Calling this “legacy” ignores that many of these platforms deliver essential capabilities to run the business. They neither can be replaced easily, nor are there always simple “cloud born” alternatives that deliver even the essential capabilities. Businesses must check whether all capabilities of existing tools are essential. Simple answer: They are not. Complex answer: Not all; but identifying and deciding on the essentials is not that easy. Thus, businesses today just can’t do all they need with the shiny, bright cloud services that are hyped.
There are two aspects to consider: One is the positive side of maturity (yes, there is a downside, by being overloaded with features, monolithic, hard to maintain,…), the other is the need to support an existing environment of services, applications, and systems ranging from the public cloud service to on-premises applications that even might rely on a mainframe.
When looking at the hyped cloud services, they always start lean – in the positive sense of being not overly complex, overloaded with features, hard to maintain, etc. Unfortunately, these services also start lean in the sense of focusing on some key features, but frequently falling short in support for the more complex challenges such as connecting to on-premises systems or coming with strong security capabilities.
Does that mean you shouldn’t look for innovative cloud services? No, on the contrary, they can be good options in many areas. But keep in mind that there might be a price to pay for capabilities. If these are not essential, that’s fine. If you consider them essential, you best first check whether they really are. If they remain essential after that check, think about how to deal with that. Can you integrate with existing tools? Will these capabilities come soon, anyway? Or will you finally end up with a shiny, bright point solution or, even worse, a zoo of such shiny, bright tools?
I’m an advocate of the shift to the cloud. And I believe in the need to get rid of many of the perceived essential capabilities that aren’t essential. But we should not be naïve regarding the hybrid reality of businesses that we need to support. That is the complex part when building services–integrating and supporting the hybrid IT. Just know of the price and do it right (which equals “well-thought-out” here).
Figure: Identity Fabrics: Connecting every user to every service
