Author: Thom Locke
Thom Locke is a Senior Practice Director, North America Business Development/ASG Solution Architecture for Oracle. With over 37 years of experience in IT Security, Thom is the Security practice leader in Oracle Consulting Services (OCS) and built Security Architecture Consulting at Oracle. Thom manages a team of experts responsible for client engagements, solution design and consulting for database security and identity management solutions from Oracle.And, you'll often find him speaking at industry conferences and events on topics of interest.
2012 it's a wrap folks! It has been an interesting year for security. Cyber security scams, viruses, stolen identities and the end of the worldor at least the prediction of it. It's amazing we are all able to login, view accounts and read our favorite blogs!As I look back, a few observations stand out that I’d like to share.
R2–In summer this year, Oraclereleased R2.My colleagues in License wanted to call this release of software something like Zargon as it truly is a game changing release for OracleIdentity Management. The IAM R2 release brings together multiple products into Directory, Identity and Access worlds.To provide a platform approach to identity, the solutions are better integrated and offer interoperability with your heterogeneous infrastructure. R2 also has out-of-box support for secure social and mobile sign-on enablement.Many clients are picking up this release and moving from the 9.1/11 releases to R2for a seamless user experience orthe first step into looking at the cloud as a solution set but we will speak more to that later.
Migration Factory - OCS has put together a new way of doing business leveraging our own business platform based on the Oracle Unified Method aka OUM. For the first time Oracle clients will be able to have a solution architect work with them and have an idea of a deliverable in real time. The platform is built on a series of solution components that allow for rapid quotation, consistent deliverables by the delivery organization. An example is that the OCS has been able to take a full Fusion Apps deliverable down from 13 weeks to 11 days- asubstantial savings in effort and cost. The same can be said for leveraging the Factory for migrations such as SIM 2 OIM and the latest offering of IAM in a box. IAM in a box"Identity Governance Version" reduces the time to deploy OIM, PAM and OIA in a production environment to weeks from months. Look for other solution components to come in 2013 such as "Mobile,Social", Federation and the DB Security bundle in a box.
How could we talk about 2012 without a trip to the clouds?As mentionedearlier,the R2 release of the IAM product setsisthe stepping stone into the cloud. Take those components and toss them on anEXA platform and,as Emril would say,“BAM”;you have an elastic cloud solution. Offerings on the Oracle cloud have jumped into the lime light. Pick your flavor-Public, Private or Semi Private cloud,Oracle has a solution we have deployed. OCS has delivered such a solution as a fully multi tenant solution set on a Public and Private Cloud for SaskTel. Check out this video recorded with SaskTel CIO, John Hill.
Data security should be on everyone’s mind. How safe is your data? Who has access what and have you seen SQL attacks throughout your system?A security assessment allows you know where your weakest link is within the enterprise and what needs to be done to fix it.
We close 2012 by saying thanks to all that we have all had to the please to work with. It looks like 2013 will be the year of Migrations, Transitions, Mobile, Cloud and it all being don "In a box". Aloha 2013 and Welcome to 2013.