Commissioned by iC Consult
1 Executive Summary
The role of IAM has changed fundamentally over the past decade. IAM today is way more than an administrative tool and a solution for enforcing Access Governance. Digital identities are at the core of the digital business. Consumers, customers, the devices and things they are using, business partners, but also services: The IAM focus of today goes well beyond employees and even beyond humans.A lack of ability in managing digital identities and their access, i.e., a lack in having a modern IAM in place, will hinder the digital business. Modern IAM and the ability to handle digital identities is essential for success not only in the initial Digital Transformation, but for continuous improvement of the Digital Business.
IAM thus must become agile and cover way more capabilities than ever before. And it must be ready when the business demand arises, not becoming a hindrance in the evolution of the Digital Business. This requires different, innovative approaches to IAM, including the way IAM is adapted to new demands. On the other hand, being an essential foundation for Digital Business, IAM must be reliable and stable. This involves approaches for adaptation and extension of IAM for delivering new capabilities to the demand.
Modern as-a-service deployment models and the growing number and maturity of standards help in reducing complexity and increasing agility. However, there is more required: A plan, an architecture, and an efficient approach for delivering new capabilities, integrations, and custom capabilities. IAM agility is based on the ability to serve new requirements fast and efficient within a defined framework. IAM agility is based on six pillars:
- Organization
- Model
- Plan
- TOM (Target Operating Model)
- Extension & Customization
- Integration
The areas of TOM and the ability of flexible extension and customization converge into the rather new concept of GitOps. Git emerged as a term for a software for distributed version control, which emerged into code management platforms. DevOps, as an established concept, combines development and operations by delivering software to operations in a continuous process. GitOps extends this concept by utilizing the concept of infrastructure as code (IaC), where the configuration of infrastructures is done as part of the code. Thus, within such model, not only customizations are provided, but as part of the GitOps approach, the configuration of the runtime environment is also managed in code. GitOps is an essential model for efficient operations of an agile IAM that is able to quickly serve new business demands. Service Layers is one of the still very few solutions, aside of pure IDaaS solutions, that consequently implement the GitOps paradigm for efficient IAM delivery and operations.
