The Cloud is not only disrupting the way in which organizations acquire and utilize computing power and business applications, it is also changing the way application development and IT operations teams view their roles and the tools they use to perform their responsibilities.
Certainly, this site is clearly illustrates how the idea of application performance management (APM) is changing in light of the rapid adoption of Cloud solutions.
I believe as more organizations adopt more Cloud solutions, the way they view identity management will also change.
In the past, identity management was considered to be important primarily for security reasons. As a result, access controls and authentication were often seen as the most important technical attributes of the leading identity management solutions.
However, as the number of Cloud alternatives explodes and the need to provide a single-point of control in an increasingly hybrid world escalates, identity management become more critical for security and other reasons.
The other reasons include monitoring application usage levels which give corporate decision-makers important insight into which applications are used most often so they can make better purchase decisions.
This tracking function has become a key new value proposition for identity management vendors seeking to appeal more to business decision-makers who are gaining greater influence over the vendor selection process. As a result, the IT professional or security specialist who was solely responsible for the selection process in the past, may now be collaborating with the procurement department or other corporate decision-makers to determine which applications to acquire and how to better manage them through a more robust identity management system that includes the necessary analytics to capture and report on user behavior.
This data, combined with today's rapidly evolving APM solutions, can give the IT and business decision-makers greater insight so they can make better selections.
Therefore, I expect the identity management and APM vendors to build closer alliances to strengthen their mutual positions in the marketplace.
Jeffrey Kaplan is the Managing Director of THINKstrategies and Founder of the Cloud Computing Showplace.
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