1 Executive Summary
Digital business has evolved from simple e-commerce websites from the 90s. Modern digital business models are complex, distributed, multidimensional and involve many parties in a variety of roles. This has a direct impact on how communication takes place, how people work together and how services and goods are created and delivered to customers.
Employees, partners, service providers, customers, devices, and processes use and provide services. Access is made from and to any conceivable location to services that are somewhere between on-premises data centers, the cloud, mobile systems.
The formerly classic corporate network with clearly defined "inside" and "outside" has given way to a massively hybrid, new IT reality. IAM (Identity and Access Management) is the essential security infrastructure for this and at the same time a facilitator of these new services, models and forms of cooperation.
To make this possible, IAM must be transformed. It needs to be converted into a consolidated portfolio of isolated but corresponding services that enable to connect anything and anyone via a comprehensive architecture, and to make services available to all users everywhere: secure, scalable and without losing control.
“Identity Fabric” refers to a logical infrastructure for enterprise Identity and Access Management. It is conceived to enable access for all, from anywhere to any service while integrating advanced features such as support for adaptive authentication, auditing capabilities, comprehensive federation of services, and dynamic authorization capabilities.
