Provisioning 2.0: The Future of Provisioning

PROVISIONING 2.0: THE FUTURE
OF PROVISIONING
A Goode Intelligence white paper sponsored by RSA

First Edition December 2014
© Goode Intelligence
All Rights Reserved
Sponsored by RSA
Published by:
Goode Intelligence
www.goodeintelligence.com
info@goodeintelligence.com
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Goode Intelligence © 2014 www.goodeintelligence.com
CONTENTS
The Challenges with Traditional Provisioning........................................................................ 2
Traditional Provisioning Failing to Support New IT Service Model ..................................... 2
Lack of automation is proving costly to business ............................................................... 3
Slow to onboard new applications ..................................................................................... 4
Disconnected from the business........................................................................................ 4
A Modern Provisioing solution – provisioning 2.0 .................................................................. 4
Business Driven ................................................................................................................ 5
Easy to Deploy and Maintain............................................................................................. 5
Built for Today’s Agile IT.................................................................................................... 6
Case Study – How An Entertainment Company is Embracing Provisioning 2.0..................... 7
Problems with Provisioning 1.0.......................................................................................... 7
Solving the Problem with Provisioning 2.0......................................................................... 7
Summary .............................................................................................................................. 8
About Goode Intelligence...................................................................................................... 9

Provisioning 2.0: The Future of Provisioning
Goode Intelligence © 2014 P a g e | 2 www.goodeintelligence.com
This white paper from Goode Intelligence (GI) explores how
existing provisioning solutions are failing to support the business
in an era where new IT service models are rapidly being deployed.
New IT service models that support mobile and cloud computing
have created problems for organizations that are already
struggling with outdated identity and access governance tools.
The paper explores a vision for Provisioning 2.0 where the goal is
to weave provisioning into the very fabric of business process.
Provisioning 2.0 is business driven, is easy to deploy and
maintain and is built for today’s agile IT.
THE CHALLENGES WITH TRADITIONAL
PROVISIONING
Traditional Provisioning Failing to Support New IT
Service Model
The twin megatrends of mobile and cloud computing are creating
challenges in the way in which organizations manage how they deliver
Identity Management and Governance (IMG) services and there are
concerns that provisioning solutions are not keeping pace with these
developments.
Goode
Intelligence
White Paper
GI’s white papers
offer analyst insight
from research
extracted from
primary sources
including surveys,
analyst reports,
interviews and
conferences.
GI Definitions
IMG: Identity
Management and
Governance
addresses the need
to access the right
resources across IT
resources

Traditional provisioning solutions are not well positioned to meet the
demands of more agile forms of IT delivery that include changes to
where and how we access enterprise data. Enterprise data is
increasingly being created and accessed by a wide-variety of devices;
smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops – owned either by the
employer (company issued devices) or employee (as part of supported
or unsupported Bring Your Own Device, BYOD). This data, and the
software services that manage it, is being stored not just within the
confines of the traditional internal perimeter.
Increasingly enterprise data is being stored outside internal perimeters;
in the cloud and accessed using web-based Software as a Service
(SaaS) platforms. Largely, provisioning solutions have not kept pace
with this agile IT model and are often built to solve yesterday’s
problems.
Goode Intelligence has identified a range of interconnected problems
with traditional provisioning solutions that result in them being difficult to
deploy and costly to maintain. Specific failures of traditional
provisioning solutions include:
 Too costly
 Slow to onboard new applications
 Disconnected from the business – IT-Centric not business
centric
Lack of automation is proving costly to business
Existing provisioning solutions can be extremely time consuming and
dependent on manual or semi-automatic processes that are inefficient
and costly.
Inefficiencies include not using repeatable processes and overreliance
on storing provisioning related data in spreadsheets that are often sent
to authorizers using email.
This is costly for the business; requiring time and resources to be
engaged in onerous manual processes.
A reliance on manual processes is also more likely to result in mistakes
being made and these mistakes can have serious consequences both
to operational efficiency and security. By incorrectly allowing a user
access to IT resources that they have no right to access an
organization can create a self-inflicted compliance problem.
By incorrectly allowing a user access to IT resources
that they have no right to access an organization can
create a self-inflicted compliance problem
BYOD: Bring Your
Own Device refers
to a trend where
employees bring in
their own computer
devices for business
purposes. The
device can be a
laptop or a mobile
device.
SaaS: Software as
a Service or “on
demand software” is
a term that defines a
delivery model for
software from a
hosted or cloud
environment.

Slow to onboard new applications
Giving employees access to new applications and data sources in a
timely manner is an essential component of delivering new or updated
IT services.
The process of onboarding new applications is frequently slowing this
process down and this can be a frustrating experience for both users
and IT delivery teams.
In some cases the delay can be measured in months and can result in
financial loss as users are unable to benefit from accessing new
applications or data sources.
Disconnected from the business
Provisioning systems are failing the business as they are largely
disconnected from the business units that own the IT services that they
are responsible for.
If there is not a direct line of responsibility between applications and
data sources and their business owners then organizations run the risk
of delivering users inappropriate access.
This disconnection from the business is also a consequence of how
Provisioning 1.0 has been designed; catering to simple user account
management and reflecting the interaction with monolithic directory
systems and networked credentials - essentially too focused on
authentication and not authorization.
As complexity increases with IT service delivery, Provisioning 1.0 fails
to offer appropriate levels of functionality to meet increasing demands
for governance and compliance and lacking visibility on access controls
and entitlements.
This situation is also rife with inefficiencies that are costly to the
business. The inefficiencies are out of line with new ways in which we
create and consume digital information and reflect an IT-centric not
business-centric approach to delivering provisioning services.
We are in desperate need for provisioning 2.0; so how should
provisioning 2.0 look and operate?
A MODERN PROVISIOING SOLUTION –
PROVISIONING 2.0
There has been a distinct movement towards a more business-led
approach to IT. Utility computing and SaaS models enable the line of
business to take control of digital services.
Provisioning 2.0 is a new method of providing provisioning services and

supports business ownership of this key component of IMG lifecycle
management.
The goal is to weave provisioning into the very fabric of business
process. Provisioning 2.0 has the following characteristics:
 Business driven
 Easy to deploy and maintain
 Built for today’s agile IT
Business Driven
Ensuring that the business is involved in IMG lifecycle management,
including provisioning access decisions, is vitally important and ensures
that the appropriate levels of governance are applied.
Provisioning 2.0 supports the shift away from simple user account
creation and disablement towards a business and governance-led
approach to provisioning.
To ensure that this happens, Provision 2.0 must support business
process and provide a simple business user experience that isn’t
complex or too technical. This can be achieved by providing business
users with a clean and uncomplicated interface.
Supporting closed-loop processes is equally important in the context of
provisioning where managers and authorizers need to be alerted that
they are required to perform a task that ensures users are on-boarded
in a timely manner. This also ensures that there are no ‘black holes’ for
access requests to disappear into.
Reporting functionality must also ensure that stakeholders in the
provisioning process are alerted to potential bottlenecks that may
require intervention.
Easy to Deploy and Maintain
A lightweight and flexible model is required to ensure provisioning
solutions are easy to deploy and maintain.
The ability to quickly deploy a provisioning solution without recourse to
a lengthy integration effort is paramount in ensuring that the benefits of
agile IAM lifecycle management are seen. And once the solution is
deployed it must be easy to maintain and flexible enough to onboard
new applications in a timely way.
Relying on a Provisioning 1.0 architecture where the business logic in
the adapter needs to be repeated for every application that is
connected results in extensive coding and can lead to duplication for up
to 90 percent of the work required for each adapter.
Compare this situation to what can be achieved when adopting

Provision 2.0 architecture; by moving the business logic to the
governance layer you can scale across all applications without the
need to repeat across each adapter. This model can result in
substantial business efficiencies with over 80 percent less effort
required.
Built for Today’s Agile IT
Provisioning 2.0 must be designed to be flexible and easy to use by
non-technical staff. Replacing a spreadsheet with something that looks
like a spreadsheet is just not good enough for a modern provisioning
solution.
Today’s IT is agile, inter-connected and accessed by multiple devices;
from laptops, desktops, smartphones, tablets and even wearables.
A Provisioning 2.0 solution must have to adapt to meet the needs of
cloud and mobile computing demands – gone are the days in which
access rights were given within a contained perimeter to users
accessing monolithic applications on a fixed desktop. This is not to say
that Provisioning 2.0 should forget about on-premise scenarios. We are
in a transitional stage in IT where organizations must support a mixture
of traditional and SaaS-based IT deployments; the latter requiring
support for applications in the cloud. An agile Provisioning 2.0 solution
must make it easy for organizations to connect through to a wide
variety of platforms.

An agile Provisioning 2.0 solution must make it easy
for organizations to connect through to a wide variety
of platforms
Provisioning 2.0 is starting to be deployed by forward-thinking
companies and the following case study explores how an entertainment
company is using RSA Identity Management and Governance (IMG) to
create a more modern automated provisioning solution.
CASE STUDY – HOW AN ENTERTAINMENT
COMPANY IS EMBRACING PROVISIONING 2.0
Problems with Provisioning 1.0
A Fortune 100 global entertainment company needed a new identity
management solution that provided them with improved provisioning
across their international organization.
The existing solution was manual and proving to be time consuming. It
was also a challenge to scale and didn’t meet the needs of the latest IT
services that they were rolling out.
Being such a large international organization (hundreds of thousands of
users) also meant that they were finding it increasingly difficult to
exactly know what employee had access to what IT resource. Like a lot
of listed companies, this was proving a real issue as they needed to be
SOX compliant.
Solving the Problem with Provisioning 2.0
The company chose an identity and access governance solution from
RSA to solve their problems. They deployed RSA IMG for Provisioning
2.0 functionality.
This business-driven solution enabled the line of business to focus on
the business and only get involved in access decisions when it was
absolutely necessary.
RSA IMG has enabled the company to automate basic provisioning,
access reviews, access requests and password updates by using built-
in workflows.
The solution also allowed the company to layer the IMG solution on top
of their existing identity management system without the need for
expensive integration.
We have noted that one of the biggest issues with existing provisioning
solutions is the fact that they are often slow and cumbersome to
onboard new applications. With RSA IMG, within 6 months, the
SOX: The
Sarbanes-Oxley Act
of 2002. Also known
as the "Public
Company
Accounting Reform
and Investor
Protection Act"

company was able to onboard 1,200 applications without the need for
onerous coding changes.
SUMMARY
This white paper explored how provisioning is failing to support the changing nature of IT
service delivery. Enterprise IT is changing rapidly and becoming more service orientated
with a new breed of mobile devices accessing digital services across a wide range of
platforms – some of which are delivered from SaaS platforms.
Provisioning services are failing in a number of key areas:
 Too costly
 Slow to onboard new applications
 Disconnected from the business – IAM team centric not business centric
Goode Intelligence believes that organizations need to deploy a new generation of
provisioning services – Provisioning 2.0.
Provisioning 2.0 is a new method of providing provisioning services and supports business
ownership of this key component of IMG lifecycle management.
The goal is to weave provisioning into the very fabric of business process with the following
characteristics:
 Business driven
 Easy to deploy and maintain
 Built for today’s agile IT
To learn more about how RSA products, services and solutions can help solve your
business and IT challenges, visit www.emc.com/rsaimg.
Or to request a demo of the RSA Identity Management and Governance solution, visit:
https://emcinformation.com/298301/REG/.ashx

ABOUT GOODE INTELLIGENCE
Since being founded by Alan Goode in 2007, Goode Intelligence has built up a strong
reputation for providing quality research and consultancy services in information security,
authentication, identity and access management and biometrics.
For more information on this or any other research please visit www.goodeintelligence.com.
This document is the copyright of Goode Intelligence and may not be reproduced,
distributed, archived, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written
consent by Goode Intelligence.

Provisioning 2.0: The Future of Provisioning

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