We just picked our booth for TechEd 2010 in New Orleans. I get up early on booth-picking day, pour some ground glass into my coffee to get in the mood, and prepare for battle. This is because we are placing ourselves in harm’s way. And as the great John Paul Jones said, “I wish to have no Connection with any Ship that does not Sail fast for I intend to go in harm’s way.”
Imanami’s “harm’s way” is a little different than Captain Jones’. We are placing ourselves in the booth right next to Microsoft’s Security Identity & Access training center, where they are going to be touting Forefront Identity Manager (was ILM 2, was MIIS). We are doing this because we are confident that we have a ship that sails fast and will accomplish what FIM purports to accomplish with a fraction of the cost (both dollar and effort cost).
If you want to provision Active Directory users, synchronize Active Directory, give effective and powerful Active Directory self-service, and manage Active Directory groups, and do it with a provable and almost instant ROI, then we have the ship for you.
We are starting to understand more about FIM and where we fit with it and against it. We know that we have a lot of customers that have both of our solutions and that they can complement each other. And we know that FIM does things we don’t (certificate management, etc). But we also see some cracks in the Microsoft strategy that isn’t helping customers. For example, what if you have self service from both Exchange 2010 and FIM, one updates Active Directory and the other updates the metadirectory. What if you have workflow assigned through Exchange 2010, will FIM respect that?
And that’s why we picked a booth right next to their training area. Ask them questions like that and then come ask us at booth 1940. Compare the solutions based on what your business needs are side by side at TechEd. On top of that, we will have cool shirts!
Jonathan Blackwell
View ProfileSince 2012, Jonathan Blackwell, an engineer and innovator, has provided engineering leadership that has put GroupID at the forefront of group and user management for Active Directory and Azure AD environments. His experience in development, marketing, and sales allows Jonathan to fully understand the Identity market and how buyers think.
Good for you. I was wondering how you were going to tackle this fight.
James, in many ways it’s the same complicated v. simple argument…but there are some added wrinkles now that we’re looking forward to exposing.
Once we have the collateral written (since we will put it in writing) I’ll post it on the blog.
-Edward