Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Who's Your Sugar Daddy? Funding Models That Work
It's true that inadequate attention to funding can kill many prospective IAM
initiatives. That's because most organisations have a “first project pays”
policy even for the creation of shared enterprise utilities. Integration of
applications with big brand-name Identity Management products typically
involves huge upfront costs (licensing as well as initial effort), and the very
first roll-out tends to be too expensive for any single business project to
bear. That's why many IAM initiatives fail at the starting line. Sometimes, a
one-time injection of enterprise funding gets such projects over the starting
line, but IAM needs to cover all major applications to be effective, and from
a logistical angle, this is necessarily a multi-year roll-out exercise. Without a
long-term vision and a phased multi-year budget, subsequent roll-outs tend
to go unfunded or place an onerous burden on business projects.
Accordingly, these initiatives then either peter out or impose unforeseen
ongoing costs to the organisation.
The approach we describe here has been specifically designed to work
around these funding constraints, because this is a problem we ourselves
faced and had to tackle. It is therefore lightweight and can be rolled out
piecemeal.
Every component is simple, minimal and relatively inexpensive. Using this
approach, you can roll out your IAM system over a multi-year period without
incurring the full cost up front. The loosely-coupled nature of the solution
also makes it feasible to implement just the parts each project needs. There
are no artificial dependencies that force the deployment of unnecessary
components at extra cost. Every project can independently justify the
business case for funding that part of the IAM solution that it requires,
because the returns are also immediate and incremental
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.
We recommend that you plan and organise these incremental roll -outs into
a coherent multi -year roadmap that leads to your desired target state
through a series of intermediate stages. Align these stages with the specific
capabilities that business projects are looking for, and piggyback off those
projects for funding
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. You may also find that each step on this journey costs
less than the previous one becau se you leverage off the assets that have
already been created and you need smaller and smaller
additional
capability.
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The next section lists the major benefits from IAM that can be used to build up a
business case.
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Appendix E provides a sample roadmap that you can tailor to your organisation's
context.
