Gartner IAM Summit 2011 -- Day 1

The first day of the Gartner Identity and Access Management (IAM) Summit in London had an unexpected theme. One of the first keynotes which James Richardson delivered was about transforming IAM by coupling it w/ BI. In this, he talked about how IAM professionals need to collaborate with others in the organization who are in charge of BI to deliver more value to the business through their identity programs. This notion of marrying IAM w/ BI was picked up by other Gartner analysts like Earl Perkins who discussed how the value of IAM is increased through identity and access intelligence. It also came up in their colleague, Perry Carpenter's, talk about choosing a user provisioning vendor. In his frank presentation (which I really appreciated for the bluntness), he said that what is needed in many cases is not another provisioning connector, but a "sheen" of BI that gives the business actionable intelligence that it can use to close the audit gap. He said that he thinks the focus of the IAM industry will shift to intelligence through the end of 2013. Talking to other attendees in the evening, however, some thought it was just something new to say to make Gartner sound forward-thinking and insightful. Others found the juxtaposition spot on. Me? I'm not sure. Too jet legged to think straight ATM.