IBM/HP: Customers Face Uncertainty With I&AM Software Strategies

Two announcements in the Identity and Access Management (I&AM) market may cause concern for customers of two of the largest vendors. IBM is acquiring Encentuate, and HP is discontinuing sales of SelectAccess to new customers. While IBM’s acquisition involves a software change which may be forced upon its customers, HP’s software will not receive any further developmental investment.

The logic behind IBM acquiring Encentuate is clear, given that the software currently sold as IBM Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-on (ITAM for ESSO) consists of software from Passlogix, an OEM partner.

In positioning Encentuate’s Single Sign-On (SSO) solution as its I&AM portfolio’s enterprise SSO constituent (which provides SSO for applications and resources from in-house), IBM may be in a better position to improve integration with its Web SSO (providing access to web-based resources) and Federated SSO (sharing access across organizational boundaries) offerings. Hence, IBM plans that Encentuate’s software will form the core of the next release of ITAM for ESSO, which is planned to be in this year’s third quarter.

IBM seemed most unwilling to explore in-depth with analysts the implications of this product change for existing customers of ITAM for ESSO, who it seems have the choice of becoming Passlogix customers (i.e. negotiating with the company that originally licensed IBM to re-use the product), or adopting the Encentuate-based new version.

While customers should have no concerns in undertaking a relationship with Passlogix (which is well established, and has a similar deal with Oracle to that it had with IBM, as well as many other partnerships with leading players in this market), the need to have to do so may be forced upon some by IBM’s position, and this may not be the way that organizations wish to undertake their management of IT vendors. The alternative of following IBM’s product upgrade path is likely to involve significant investment: there was no indication from IBM of any migration tool for policies, credentials, settings, schema extensions, or databases – the artifacts that constitute a customer’s system just as much as the base product itself.

HP, meanwhile, was careful to say that it will continue to support existing customers of SelectAccess, the software acquired in 2003 from former dot.com boom giant Baltimore Technologies. However, those customers might be concerned in planning further developments around a product that will not benefit from any further developmental investment.

From HP’s perspective, however, this move is perfectly understandable, as the company had stood still after making its initial acquisition in the I&AM market, and meanwhile its competitors have expanded their capabilities to an extent that would require HP to invest considerably to upgrade SelectAccess commensurately, and with little prospect of making a differentiating mark in what is now a largely mature market.

It is interesting to see IBM continuing to invest in the higher-value areas of IT security products, and it seems to have recognized the strong technology base of Encentuate’s product in announcing plans to leverage the acquired company’s development team as the basis for an IBM Security Software Laboratory in Singapore. That is perhaps one source of future innovation, and it is expected that in some respect IBM’s offerings in the security space will broaden further, following on from this acquisition, and those in the recent past of Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Consul.

Despite this move by HP, the company may still make a big acquisition in the security marketplace. It has very sizeable ambitions to grow HP Software, and also has the scope to complement any range of security offerings with expanded capabilities from HP Services, further broadening its relationships with customers. A number of potential acquisition targets might, similarly to HP, sell into both the consumer and enterprise markets, providing HP with cost-saving delivery synergies, and cross-selling opportunities.

Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)