October 18, 2011
Dave Kearns, IDM Journal
There's a theme running through recent product announcements I've been hearing about – "cheaper and more efficient". That's how Identropy described their SCUID initiative and it's also how Courion presented their new Access Risk Management Suite. When Aveksa used similar terms for their recent release of Access Fulfillment Express (AFX), I realized that there was a new priority for IdM products.
Aveksa describes AFX as "…a new fulfillment solution designed to help enterprises more efficiently and cost-effectively fulfill access changes, such as those stemming from employee on-boarding and off-boarding, employee transfers, and access reviews."
The company is quick to point out that AFX isn't a traditional provisioning product. In fact, they tout that as one of its strengths. The announcement of AFX notes "…rather than relying on traditional heavyweight and proprietary provisioning system integration, Aveksa's solution is based on an open-source enterprise service bus with a published message format and an open source adapter model."
So how does AFX differ from traditional the provisioning model?
Traditional provisioning systems, according to Aveksa, combine business and integration logic into a single, tightly-bound system, scoped only to the endpoints to which it is connected. As a result, customer integration with business applications and processes has typically required extensive analysis, modeling, and adjustment. This complex integration approach has proven difficult, labor-intensive, and expensive.
In contrast, Aveksa's AFX separates business logic from integration logic, enabling the definition and execution of access policies, roles, and workflows from a centralized, business perspective using automation. This enables the creation of business roles and rules, defining who should have access to what, across all enterprise application and data resources — independent of the mechanics of integration. This innovative architecture provides a clean separation of business logic from integration logic enabling customers to embark on an Access Governance-driven fulfillment model and take ownership of integration without having to rely on heavy customization or expensive vendor services.
Aveksa claims AFX provides enterprises with the following benefits:
