IBM Verify

Dear Experts,

We're planning to implement an identity management solution and are considering IBM's offerings. Initially, we were set on using the IGI Lifecycle module, but recent discussions with IBM sales and technical teams have introduced IM (Identity Manager) and its containerized version as alternatives. We'd appreciate your insights on the following:

Our key requirements include:

1. User and account management (creation, modification, deletion, provisioning, and administration)
2. Access verification (Certificate Campaigns)
3. Compliance management
4. Access optimization
5. (There are more but above are the key)

We've learned that IBM plans to merge IM and IGI in the future. Given this information, we're reassessing our architectural approach. Our main concerns are:

1. Customization capabilities: We've successfully customized the "Person" object in IGI Lifecycle by modifying the USER_ERC table. Can IM and IM Containerized support similar customizations?
2. Long-term viability: If we proceed solely with IGI Lifecycle, could this decision cause issues with future upgrades and migrations?
3. Feature comparison: What are the key differences between IGI Lifecycle, IM, and IM Containerized in terms of features and capabilities?

We understand this is a complex query, but any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Your expertise will significantly inform our decision-making process.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

I do not know where in the world you are located and who in IBM you are talking with - but the information you are seeking should be handled by your local IBM (Tech)Sales team who can assure your questions are answered correctly. The reason is that our roadmap details are confidential and that IBM is only giving these details under NDA.

I will try to ping the correct people inside IBM so that you can get an answer.

That said - it is not a secret that the situation is as described - it is the plan to move all advanced governance functionality existing in IGI to IM - recertification campaigns for accounts and groups are already there and will be improved over the next releases to include also persons (roles).

I do not really understand that you can be planning to use IGI Lifecycle - that does not allow advanced governance functionality - only basic lifecycle stuff. To allow the usage of the advanced governance functionality you must buy the additional licenses or ISVG Enterprise licenses as I understand it - and that is also required for ISVG IM containerized version.

Customization of ISVG IM is much more flexible that that of ISVG IGI - this is actually one of the core reasons to merge IGI functionality into IM. But let the local team demonstrate that to you - talking is easy - but showing is much better :-) 

HTH - and hopefully you will be contacted by the IBM account team soon....

Dear Experts,

We're planning to implement an identity management solution and are considering IBM's offerings. Initially, we were set on using the IGI Lifecycle module, but recent discussions with IBM sales and technical teams have introduced IM (Identity Manager) and its containerized version as alternatives. We'd appreciate your insights on the following:

Our key requirements include:

1. User and account management (creation, modification, deletion, provisioning, and administration)
2. Access verification (Certificate Campaigns)
3. Compliance management
4. Access optimization
5. (There are more but above are the key)

We've learned that IBM plans to merge IM and IGI in the future. Given this information, we're reassessing our architectural approach. Our main concerns are:

1. Customization capabilities: We've successfully customized the "Person" object in IGI Lifecycle by modifying the USER_ERC table. Can IM and IM Containerized support similar customizations?
2. Long-term viability: If we proceed solely with IGI Lifecycle, could this decision cause issues with future upgrades and migrations?
3. Feature comparison: What are the key differences between IGI Lifecycle, IM, and IM Containerized in terms of features and capabilities?

We understand this is a complex query, but any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Your expertise will significantly inform our decision-making process.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Hi Franz, Thank you again for the descriptive answer from your end. :-)

Im from the Sri Lanka and we are doing the very first Governance implementation in  here for a bank. By referring to to "IGI Lifecycle" it is the same product covered in the https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/sig-and-i/10.0.2?topic=verify-governance section (May be the term I have used can be wrong). We have done a lot including account provision/deprovision, Certificate Campaigns, Workflows, Automated temporary access grants etc, We contacted IBM for one of challenge we faced with creation of a custom adaptor that can consume and expose REST services for the target applications that has API layer as their account management mechanism. 

Despite the requirement of creation of the custom adapter IBM team (India) insisted us to go ahead with IM instead of IGI. They explained us the IM is fully aligned with the roadmap and we should use it. My concern was We had almost completed the given scope with IGI and it looked solid. Still I don't have a proper justification why we need to opt out IGI but to use IM despite the fact that the IM is the core product of the governance.

IGI capabilities were pretty premising and and looked solid. Do we really need to start everything with IM? if I continue with IGI will there by any dead-end?

I do not know where in the world you are located and who in IBM you are talking with - but the information you are seeking should be handled by your local IBM (Tech)Sales team who can assure your questions are answered correctly. The reason is that our roadmap details are confidential and that IBM is only giving these details under NDA.

I will try to ping the correct people inside IBM so that you can get an answer.

That said - it is not a secret that the situation is as described - it is the plan to move all advanced governance functionality existing in IGI to IM - recertification campaigns for accounts and groups are already there and will be improved over the next releases to include also persons (roles).

I do not really understand that you can be planning to use IGI Lifecycle - that does not allow advanced governance functionality - only basic lifecycle stuff. To allow the usage of the advanced governance functionality you must buy the additional licenses or ISVG Enterprise licenses as I understand it - and that is also required for ISVG IM containerized version.

Customization of ISVG IM is much more flexible that that of ISVG IGI - this is actually one of the core reasons to merge IGI functionality into IM. But let the local team demonstrate that to you - talking is easy - but showing is much better :-) 

HTH - and hopefully you will be contacted by the IBM account team soon....

Dear Experts,

We're planning to implement an identity management solution and are considering IBM's offerings. Initially, we were set on using the IGI Lifecycle module, but recent discussions with IBM sales and technical teams have introduced IM (Identity Manager) and its containerized version as alternatives. We'd appreciate your insights on the following:

Our key requirements include:

1. User and account management (creation, modification, deletion, provisioning, and administration)
2. Access verification (Certificate Campaigns)
3. Compliance management
4. Access optimization
5. (There are more but above are the key)

We've learned that IBM plans to merge IM and IGI in the future. Given this information, we're reassessing our architectural approach. Our main concerns are:

1. Customization capabilities: We've successfully customized the "Person" object in IGI Lifecycle by modifying the USER_ERC table. Can IM and IM Containerized support similar customizations?
2. Long-term viability: If we proceed solely with IGI Lifecycle, could this decision cause issues with future upgrades and migrations?
3. Feature comparison: What are the key differences between IGI Lifecycle, IM, and IM Containerized in terms of features and capabilities?

We understand this is a complex query, but any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Your expertise will significantly inform our decision-making process.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

I understand that you have been in contact with Dinesh Jain who is Product Manager for the ISVG products. He can explain it to you.

It is no secret that IBM is trying to merge the functionality of IGI and IM into IM and also provide container based implementation for IM. There are as far as I know no plans for IGI in containers.

IGI has some good governance features - these will be moved to IM - recertification campaigns for Account/Groups are already in IM - more will follow with the next version.  But the details you can get from IBM Product Management (Dinesh).

My recommendation is the same - IM is a much more scalable provisioning system and if you are not using the real advanced IGI functionality like Business Activities (Risk modelling) or the SAP ARCS module you should be able to use IM (container platform) which is way more scalable than IGI and much more extensible - it is lacking in UI workflows - but is designed for automation and the back end workflow engine together with the provisioning policies still beats most of the competition in provisioning use cases...

HTH 

Hi Franz, Thank you again for the descriptive answer from your end. :-)

Im from the Sri Lanka and we are doing the very first Governance implementation in  here for a bank. By referring to to "IGI Lifecycle" it is the same product covered in the https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/sig-and-i/10.0.2?topic=verify-governance section (May be the term I have used can be wrong). We have done a lot including account provision/deprovision, Certificate Campaigns, Workflows, Automated temporary access grants etc, We contacted IBM for one of challenge we faced with creation of a custom adaptor that can consume and expose REST services for the target applications that has API layer as their account management mechanism. 

Despite the requirement of creation of the custom adapter IBM team (India) insisted us to go ahead with IM instead of IGI. They explained us the IM is fully aligned with the roadmap and we should use it. My concern was We had almost completed the given scope with IGI and it looked solid. Still I don't have a proper justification why we need to opt out IGI but to use IM despite the fact that the IM is the core product of the governance.

IGI capabilities were pretty premising and and looked solid. Do we really need to start everything with IM? if I continue with IGI will there by any dead-end?

I do not know where in the world you are located and who in IBM you are talking with - but the information you are seeking should be handled by your local IBM (Tech)Sales team who can assure your questions are answered correctly. The reason is that our roadmap details are confidential and that IBM is only giving these details under NDA.

I will try to ping the correct people inside IBM so that you can get an answer.

That said - it is not a secret that the situation is as described - it is the plan to move all advanced governance functionality existing in IGI to IM - recertification campaigns for accounts and groups are already there and will be improved over the next releases to include also persons (roles).

I do not really understand that you can be planning to use IGI Lifecycle - that does not allow advanced governance functionality - only basic lifecycle stuff. To allow the usage of the advanced governance functionality you must buy the additional licenses or ISVG Enterprise licenses as I understand it - and that is also required for ISVG IM containerized version.

Customization of ISVG IM is much more flexible that that of ISVG IGI - this is actually one of the core reasons to merge IGI functionality into IM. But let the local team demonstrate that to you - talking is easy - but showing is much better :-) 

HTH - and hopefully you will be contacted by the IBM account team soon....

Dear Experts,

We're planning to implement an identity management solution and are considering IBM's offerings. Initially, we were set on using the IGI Lifecycle module, but recent discussions with IBM sales and technical teams have introduced IM (Identity Manager) and its containerized version as alternatives. We'd appreciate your insights on the following:

Our key requirements include:

1. User and account management (creation, modification, deletion, provisioning, and administration)
2. Access verification (Certificate Campaigns)
3. Compliance management
4. Access optimization
5. (There are more but above are the key)

We've learned that IBM plans to merge IM and IGI in the future. Given this information, we're reassessing our architectural approach. Our main concerns are:

1. Customization capabilities: We've successfully customized the "Person" object in IGI Lifecycle by modifying the USER_ERC table. Can IM and IM Containerized support similar customizations?
2. Long-term viability: If we proceed solely with IGI Lifecycle, could this decision cause issues with future upgrades and migrations?
3. Feature comparison: What are the key differences between IGI Lifecycle, IM, and IM Containerized in terms of features and capabilities?

We understand this is a complex query, but any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Your expertise will significantly inform our decision-making process.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.