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More questions IAM buyers should ask

Jul 03, 2014
Martin Kuppinger

Earlier this year, I published the Buyer’s Guide: Access Governance and Provisioning. That document provides condensed information about key selection criteria for Identity Provisioning and Access Governance products, while also posing questions that buyers should ask of vendors.

I focused on “top 10 non-functional selection criteria” or “top 10 questions to ask the vendors”. As always with such lists that focus on the top xx, some aspects are not covered. The feedback I got so far adds some interesting aspects.

One is localization, i.e. support for different languages, character sets, etc. Given that, in particular, Access Governance is a business user application, it must be localized. Thus, questions such as the following ones might be considered:

  • Which languages are supported by the end user interfaces? (maybe with a list of languages a buyer specifically needs)
  • Can further languages be added?
  • Is there support for double-byte characters in the user interface and the search capabilities?
The second are is reporting. This is not only about advanced “Identity/Access Analytics”, but also about basic reporting capabilities. Questions to ask here are, for instance:
  • How do you modify an existing report?
  • How do you implement a new one?
  • Do the reports support multiple languages? Can this be implemented?
Clearly, there are far more criteria to look at when doing a thorough product selection. That is why the Buyer’s Guide is only one part of KuppingerCole services. Leadership Compass documents help in identifying relevant vendors and their particular strengths. Other reports such as Product Reports and Executive Views dive into more detail. Our advisory services include IAM/IAG maturity analysis, i.e. understanding the maturity of the current state of your IAM/IAG program, but also support the selection of vendors, backed by comprehensive, fine-grained questionnaires for RFI (Request For Information) processes. Just talk with my colleagues at sales@kuppingercole.com if you need more than the Top 10 questions.