#SAPTechEd - SAP Netweaver & GRC Identity Management During the last 30 month I was rather critical towards SAP's approach on how to position and further develop the technology acquired from Norwegian MaXware in 2007. The visit to SAP TechEd 2009 in Vienna showed through several technical presentations and direct interviews with people such as Keith Grayson, that SAP did a really job in not only integrating MaXware into the Netweaver group but also coming up with a sound strategy on how to move forward with whole offering. Besides the fact that Business Objects GRC systems still has some valuable functionality as provisioning tool for complex environments, the capabilities regarding the “Netweaver to SAP application” provisioning can now safely be called “unparalled” in the market. If you have access to the SDN platform, make sure to get your hands on the numerous slides in the SIMxyz track of TechEd. You can learn how to easily implement SAP Netweaver Identity Management, integrate with SAP Business Objects GRC and much more. As pointed out above, the joint deployment of the “standard provisioning engine” and the GRC one does have some benefits, especially if the Compliant User Provisioning (CUP) features are needed due to strong GRC requirements. It has been stressed in the sessions, that such a design needs to be planned very carefully and that cross-competence teams should be in charge of this to get all requirements and stakeholders represented in the final architecture. Regarding 3rd party system integration, the ongoing standardization plays into SAPs hands, as Keith and I discussed the growing relevance of SPML and SAML 2.0, which, by the way, has now been tested and certified to be working with SAP ID management solutions and might find its way into the core product in the future. More and more provisioning targets become easier to integrate, as the corresponding ISVs now see openness towards IAM solution as a benefit. To sum the impressions up: Keith and all the others did a great job in “turning around a skeptical analyst”. I am positive, that the current setup and strategy will result in a good position in the ever changing Enterprise Identity Management market for SAP.