Identity Management Heats Up

Software vendors are dangling big financial carrots in front of their rivals customers in an attempt to win a share of the growing identity management market.

As enterprise IT systems become increasingly complex, handling who gets access to what is becoming a major headache for firms. But it is also big business. Computer Associates International Inc. (CA)’s (NYSE: CA) decision to shell out $430 million on security specialist Netegrity has prompted a flurry of activity from rival vendors keen to get a share of the action (see CA Nets Netegrity for $430M).

Yesterday Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) made a bold move to lure Netegrity customers onto its own OpenView identity management platform, offering discounts of up to 80 percent. HP is even offering the chance of complementary consulting services (see HP Offers Identity Mgt Trade Up ).

But the Palo Alto, Calif., firm is not the only major vendor sweet-talking Netegrity users. Within hours of CA announcing its planned acquisition of Netegrity, Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) made its own attempt to woo the security vendor’s customers onto its own Access Manager platform (see Sun Migrates Identity Management).

Why all the fuss? Identity management, notes Jonathan Penn, analyst at Forrester Research Inc., "is certainly emerging as a standard endeavor within IT. It’s a big deal.”With companies increasingly relying on their partners to help run their day-to-day business, more and more people need secure access to corporate IT systems. Using an interface such as a Web portal, identity management software gives users a single password to connect to a variety of back-end IT systems.

Waltham, Mass.-based Netegrity’s products include its policy-based security software, SiteMinder, and its Web-services offering, TransactionMinder. The company also offers IdentityMinder, a policy-based product for managing users and access to Web applications.

Clearly, the stakes are high for CA, Sun, and HP. Netegrity is widely regarded as the identity management leader, and the company’s products are licensed to more than 300 million users at over 800 organizations worldwide.

But analysts are not convinced that Netegrity users will go for the deals offered by rival vendors. “Current Netegrity customers will wait and see,” says Forrester's Penn, who asserts that staying with Netegrity/CA would be much less disruptive than a wholesale move over to a new product.

Jason Bloomberg, analyst at ZapThink LLC

agrees: "If you have somebody who has already installed SiteMinder and it is working fine for them, there is no reason to switch."Netegrity, of course, is not the only player in this market; companies such as Oblix, Entrust, and RSA Security Inc. (Nasdaq: RSAS) also offer identity management products.

Penn believes that Oblix could be the next to get snapped up. The Cupertino, Calif.-based firm’s products would be a good fit with a vendor such as Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) or SAP AG (NYSE/Frankfurt: SAP), which are looking to build security into their application platforms, he says.

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-gen Data Center Forum