Some time ago, as a result of some of the fundamental reorganizations Siemens had to do within the last two years ago, the department responsible for the DirX solutions has been moved into the healthcare unit of Siemens. That was a somewhat unusual place for an identity management product unit. Now, Siemens is reorganizing again. Besides three core areas (Industry, Healthcare, Energy) there will be several cross-sector activities. One of these is Siemens IT Solutions and Services.
Within the Siemens IT Solutions and Services (SIS) there will be a unit “Identity Management and Biometrics” in which Siemens bundles its DirX and Biometrics activities.SIS will offer complete solutions including Smartcards, PKIs and security consulting around the products of this unit. Besides this the unit will work with VARs and plans to enlarge its set of partners beyond Siemens Enterprise Communications and some few other partners they currently have. There are also plans to extend the IAM portfolio through partnerships.
Even while we have to wait how well the new structure works, how successful SIS is in selling IAM projects up to a complete outsourcing and how the partner landscape around DirX will change – Siemens is now in an obviously much better position again. The new organizational structure is by far more logical than the placement in the healthcare department has ever been. We will observe how the new structure works in reality. But Siemens should be considered as a strong vendor again, even if you might haven't done this for some time.