Identity management is not more limited to user provisioning and single sign on. It is business enabler. With the predicted growth of digital identities, it is becoming critical for business leader to keep the identity management in their top priorities to remain leader in their domain.
Growing business to business IAM
The customer identity management is spreading in all directions. It is no longer limited to the business customers but involves partners, intermediaries, dealers, brokers and retailers. These new definitions of customers include it all, and it certainly covering all aspects of business to business scenarios. With customer identity management platforms as foundation business are embarking on new voyages of identity management which have not been travelled before. The new tools are offering capabilities for lifecycle management, activation and deactivation workflows, and easy to manage dashboards CIAM is capturing the business to business integration segments.
Convergence of identities
Customer identity management has been rising in last few years but now the clearly emerging trend is convergence of various identities user have on different systems. User are not creating new identities but moving their existing profiles with the help of identity federation protocols and capabilities offered by identity sharing platforms.
APIs and Microservices are growing at fastest rate
This diversification of users, that are all connected in various ways, asks for a new approach in technology and architecture. A standard IAM system with connectors is no longer enough. Everything needs to be customisable and integrable with all kinds of applications, connecting dots and data across a digital ecosystem. Microservices deliver the agility and foundation for a future-ready IAM solution.
Disappearing crypto chains
While it was still the talk of the town during the last two years of EIC, it seemed to have almost disappeared from the stage this year. Tech visionairies still hope Blockchain is going to play a big role in the development of Self-Sovereign Identity. In practice, I would see this happening in a private blockchain structure, but even then: who wants to bear the costs, who will be accountable if things go wrong? It’s nice to discuss and dream about it, but I don’t really see new ideas taking the stage.
Artificial Intelligence
AI is another technological trend that is hot and happening. I do agree that it offers lots of possibilities, but I’m always a bit sceptical when the reference point is the technique. “It’s here and we need to do cool stuff with it,” opposed to “This is our business case, and AI would be of great help in these areas…” The purposes where I would see an added value is the artificial structuring of data, where it could turn data swamps in actionable data lakes. And of course, in automated behavioural access management. I’m not sure if that aspect is that new, since credit card companies have done it for years. Although I’m sceptical, I do have hopes for AI. It would be great if the excitement around AI actually results in useful applications instead of fading out like it somehow did for Blockchain.
