Shame about the blunt and somewhat impolite staff running their venue but these people need jobs and Microsoft's "Customer" centre , 10 mins from the Houses of Parliament is as good a place to work as anywhere, I guess. Needless to say the coffee wasn't flowing (no mid morning break) and the slightly dry sandwiches were at best unimpressive which kind of set the tone although I didn't realise it at the time.
Anyway, enough of all that, it was the product and it's capabilities I went to see.
So imagine, to make a written point more graphic, a model preparing to hit the catwalk and show off a 'nearly ready' new outfit. The clothes designers have done their bit, they've designed, styled, restyled and redesigned the outfit. The model is ready, the catwalk awaits but neither the make-up artist nor the hair stylist have turned up and to make things even worse, the wrong model is wearing the outfit. The lights are wrong, the set design is wrong and the audience is... wrong. That's how I see Microsoft's latest and greatest Identity Management solution... it's VERY unfinished.
Several years ago MS acknowledged the need to connect directories, provision stuff, do ID management stuff and so on and acquired a product Zoomit VIA which became known as MMS 2.x which then became MIIS 2003 which then became ILM 2007, the abbreviations are irrelevant because ILM "2" isn't ILM! ILM stands for Identity Lifecycle Manager and (unfortunately in my view) the Marketing department has decided to include this future release with their security product set and therefore call it Forefront Identity Manager 2010. So FIM 2010 (two thousand and ten) it will be. Unofficial though the leaked name is [update: click here], like its predecessors it is largely irrelevant - but confusing all the same.
Microsoft's approach in this space has been slow and reminds me of the age when it took them 18 months to support their own new Client Operating Systems in SMS, (now SCCM). The difference here is that I know more and they appear cautious, very cautious... So what goodies do we get in the new product and why the slow delivery?
Forgotten Password - at last I cry, but my tears of joy soon fade and the cold, deflated drops of enthusiasm dry as my mind wonders to patchy, sceptical and meandering thoughts. I saw the first RC (Release Candidate) today and whilst I appreciate the extension of the much expected final product release from Q1 2009 to Q1 2010 at the earliest if I were a product manager owning this thing I'd be thinking long and hard about whether or not it's the right way to go.
So a good strategist needs to read between the lines, to see the outfit without the hair or the make-up or the model. So what is it that MS are offering in a new product that drives forward identity management in a way that others will follow, what ground breaking concepts are being introduced that CTO's will fight for and businesses will invest in? What functions and features will users love and enjoy, what processes and automation will reduce incidents whilst maximising user effectiveness? What one nugget of WOW! can I tell my team and peers about when I return, and what would I tell my industry colleagues with whom I mutually share best practice, insights and learning's.
Well, in this case, absolutely nothing.
It's a sad fact that FIM2010 is narrow in functional capability, does far less than the competition and in an enterprise, will require constant and consistent investment to maintain. YES, they do offer "codeless" policies where a web gui lets you do the basics (although its very laborious), yes, you can do forgotten password albeit with a complex process to manage languages and no option of user defined questions and yes, it will talk to SAP and - at least - some of your connected systems. The very basic foundations are there but without a dark room, lots of sandals and some hairy coders it's never going to do what I want for Mars. (no offence meant to the developer community!)
It is a simple tool, for simple organisations - that is organisations with simple needs - and for those, if it's cheap (read cheap as "Free" or "Almost Free") yeah, it'll do 80% OK. For Universities and public sector organisations functional breadth or depth is not key and where living with the knowledge that we could do more if we had the money this product will be good enough I'm sure, but given the widely accepted view that identity lies at the heart of every system nowadays I expected more from Microsoft.
Oxford Computer Group were good hosts, Microsoft were silent during the briefing but the material - and the (3 or so) other customers that were there had some interesting points, but nothing for me that couldn't be done in an hour, on webex. There was way too much technical detail and for a technologist that's hard for me to say, but if you have to start messing around in SQL databases and digging deep into batch processes to show off ILM I was either at the wrong "Introduction" to ILM"2" or there is something seriously amiss.
If you'd like the hardcore details of what I learned, let me know and I'll gladly bore you with my endless notes and scribbles. Take away from this the fact that Microsoft are great at some things - I'm the worlds biggest advocate of MS Office - but at others they just arn't even close. Next step for us is to get a view of the FIM roadmap, from Microsoft and in detail. We'll stay up to date with the product and confirm that we are NOT (as my Vision presumes) a 'simple' organisation, because if we are, this might just about do (as long as someone else implements it!), but it's a very long way down the catwalk before we show off our new identity if it's to have a Microsoft badge on it.
ILM"2" Workshop by the Oxford Computer Group in conjunction with Microsoft and Gemalto
21st April 2009 at Cardinal Place, London.
Presentor Good - I think he did what he was there to do
Content Poor - Too technical for me, or even you - unless you are an SQL Programmer
Relavance Good - Based on the agenda, Poor - based on what actually happened
Materials Poor - Poor handouts, narrow customer mix, presenter used someone else's slides
Venue Poor - Unhelpful and moody staff, no coffee.
Overall Good - Why? Because I saw what I think (hope) is the worst of the product, not the best.
Doug.
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