The ones who are reading our newsletter or the articles at our website for some time know that IAM for the midsize market, e.g. the not that big corporations, is one of my favourite topics. Today I had an interesting discussion with a vendor who raised the question which vendor will dominate that market. There are four options:

  • SAP
  • Microsoft
  • IBM
  • The rest
SAP is a favourite for customers which are still using SAP as their strategic ERP platform. Microsoft enters the customers via the Active Directory. IBM is still there, at least at most of the midsize companies. Thus, everyone else has to prove that he fulfills the needs of midsize companies better than the other ones. Some vendors, mainly with regional focus (e.g. only US or D-A-CH or somewhere else) are delivering specific solutions for this market. That goes beyond licensing and means to support pre-defined processes, optimized connectors, best practices and so on.

I personally believe that it won't be only the three I have named explicitly. Every vendor who is able to deliver a real midsize offering will have a good chance to win customers - just because there are so many corporations which require an IAM solution...