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Identity and Access Management RFI/RFP tenders a waste of time?
http://www.bloglines.com/blog/Marcus-Lasance?id=19
Submitted by
LASANCE
17 months, 2 days, 21 hours agoWhat is your experience with IAM tenders? Do they come up with the best solution and do they represent value for money?
#1 - By Duncan, 16 months, 1 week, 7 days, 21 hours ago.
Agreed that protracted, functionality-focused RFP's in any mature technology sector are largely a waste of time. Far better is to state the customer's key business requirements alongside any stated objectives and tactical/strategic challenges and let the possible vendors build a vision from their solution portfolio to match these needs.
However, you are wrong to state that there is little differentiation between the IAM offerings of Microsoft, SAP, SUN, IBM, Oracle, CA etc. Some offer proprietary solutions with others being interoperable and standards based. Some have extensions to their Identity Management ecosystem (such as extended authentication tools or anti-fraud monitoring) whilst others focus on core provisioning and web access control. A simple RFP process (or even a little Googling) can help to quickly weed out the wheat from the chaff in this space depending on your specific needs. #2 - By LASANCE, 16 months, 1 week, 6 days, 21 hours ago.
No argument with your second point, that under the bonnet and in certain value adding tools differentiators can still be found just like a car can have a combustion or an electric engine and still get you from A to B.
Using Web Services and LDAP however should at least standardise the interfaces. I liked the approach of one of my German customers who organised a one week 'paid for' Proof of Concept excercise in their labs using Virtual Machines representing their main target environments. They made a list of deliverables deliberately set ambitious to see which Vendor had the highest hit rate at the end of the week. This also gave them an indication how well they would perform if they got the 'real' job. #3 - By Jeff, 13 months, 1 week, 9 days, 19 hours ago.
I could not agree more. Being a software provider (ERP), i get to be on the receiving end of some of these gems. The majority of their requests are either ridiculous, or breach some time of confidentiality rules. Blind RFP's are generally tossed in the trash, unless I can talk with them to establish if it is worth the day or two it is going to take me to reply, and for the most part, all the information could be addressed in a 1/2 hour phone call.
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