Nulli Land

Gartner Catalyst Conference - July 26 - 29 2011

2011-07-13T10:49:00.000-06:00

Just a reminder that the Gartner Catalyst Conference being held in San Diego July 26-29th is fast approaching and is one that if it isn't currently on your radar should be there. We at Nulli had been attending the predecessor to this conference since 1999 run by the Burton Group but have made last year's conference probably our last for some time to come.

Even though we see this as a very valuable conference that covers the spectrum of Identity Management, Cloud Computing, Data Management, Network and telecommunications and Content Management amongst other topics. We really like this conference but find with our focus on Identity Mangement and Access Governance and Security that Catalyst is a bit too broad topic wise for our needs and would rather attend conferences with specific focuses in our areas of interest. From a networking and contact relationship building venue Catalyst is also really great but this year we have decided to focus on Garner's Identity Summit. The Summit is held in San Diego as well but is later in the year and seems to have a more focused approach and style that last year our analysts and architects found very very valuable.

In any event please consider attending the Catalyst Conference where you can certainly extend your knowledge of what is happening in the current world of identity management and track multiple other disciplines. It also affords you an opportunity to meet the various vendors in the field who offer hospitality suites and a chance to challenge them on how they deliver solutions that drive ROI and success for your firm.

Hope to see you all later in the year at Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit in San Diego from November 14 - 16 2011.

Derek - IM (a) Solution Architect, (b) HI Architect (c) HI IM Nulli

OpenICF Community Launch - Identity Connector Framework (ICF)

2011-05-10T15:02:00.000-06:00

ForgeRock, the open source Identity-Oriented middleware company, has joined a global community to launch a new open source project today. The OpenICF, Identity Connector Framework (ICF) community will provide a home for the development of multi-purpose connectors used by identity providers such as ForgeRock's OpenIDM, Oracle Waveset (formerly Sun Identity Manager) and other governance and compliance software.

Nulli has been a developer of open framework connectors for the Sun Identity Manager product and is now working on new connectors that can be contributed to the OpenICF community. Derek Small, CEO of Nulli said, "We are very excited to be contributing partners to the OpenICF community project and look forward to having our identity connectors added to the community pool of resources for this initiative. It's great to provide companies with an industry leading source of identity connectivity for their identity integration projects."

For more information and to see the press release, go to ForgeRock's press release here.

Join Us! Identity Breakfast Forum - Feb 7th, Calgary, AB; Mar 1st, Bellevue, WA

2011-01-24T14:09:00.005-07:00

Today’s Identity Solutions are going well beyond basic account provisioning and are successfully addressing new business challenges. Furthermore, companies are discovering that identity solutions can provide greater value when business intelligence tools are used to mine identity data. To learn more, join us for an Identity Breakfast Forum in Calgary, Alberta on Monday, Feb. 7th and Bellevue, Washington on Tuesday, March 1st. For more details and to register:

Oracle Open World 2010 - Post-Conference Thoughts

2010-10-10T12:19:00.000-06:00

Nulli Secundus was again in attendance at Oracle Open World 2010 and the conference/marketing festival was everything we expected and then some. Crowds were the name of the game with a reported 40,000 people in attendance. The numbers probably included about 10,000 Oracle sales and marketing people (they were everywhere) and about 8-10,000 JavaOne attendees with the balance being a mix of Oracle partner attendees and customers.

Exalogic was the focus of several of the keynotes by Oracle and we at Nulli are thinking that these machines might be a necessary investment required to support the new SOA and Fusion applications. Having reviewed the new additions to the Oracle 11g Identity and Security suite we think we'll need a "low-end" Exalogic machine fitted into a Samsonite travel suitcase for each of our consultants supporting the roll-out of the new stack.

With the announcement of the long awaited and soon to released Fusion applications, the ExaLogic machines or similiarly configured hardware will be another key component to include in your project budgets. These Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) applications will need to have a harmony of hardware and software well coordinated in the middle-ware tier to support the Fusion applications from a performance and support perspective.

Larry Ellison made several key presentations during the conference which was a change from previous years. His opening night talk on "the cloud" with a sneak preview on Exalogic set the stage for how important this Open World Conference was for Oracle.

Middle-ware by its very nature lends itself to being complex. The delivery on the SOA suites for Security and Identity 11g by Oracle now ups the ante on how these tools will need to be orchestrated and deployed in close harmony with one another. The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) foundations for all of the Fusion applications and for the newly released Oracle 11g R1 Identity and Security products makes for a need for hardware that can scale and expand to support the data coordination and communication between all the reliant components. I will write more on this in a subsequent post.

Sessions that discussed the roadmap for Identity Management with respect to the Sun Microsystems product set of Sun Identity Manager (IDM, SIM, Waveset), the Sun LDAP directory and Sun OpenSSO were heavily attended. I am not certain everyone walked away with a warm and fuzzy feeling about where things were heading but it left people with an opportunity to hear the options.

Fundamentally, if you are looking at Sun OpenSSO and the Sun LDAP directory server you have a number of updates in your future with Oracle. In the longer-term, if you are looking at the question of "Do I upgrade Sun IDM to version 8?", then you have to assess the pain of upgrading from your current release level to version 8 relative to installing OIM and porting features from Sun IDM. If you are for example at version 6 of Sun IDM, you will need to upgrade 6 to 7 and then 7 to 8 as there is no direct path from 6 to 8. How portable will the connectors be under OIM? Each one under the open connector framework will have to be assessed and a gap analysis conducted to determine which connectors will be ported and which will have to be net-new.

Similarly, with OpenSSO a client will have to investigate the effort and cost of continuing to upgrade from version 7 of OpenSSO to version 8. Clients will also have to weigh the option of upgrading to version 9 or greater as delivered under the OpenSSO community. ForgeRock is now a software development company that has hung its future on the success of continuing to develop the OpenSSO code line with new features and offering full product support to customers interested in an enterprise support model for their software. So customers now need to assess staying with the Oracle OpenSSO applications for Access Management ect. vis-a-vis moving their support model over to ForgeRock's OpenAM and continuing to utilize the OpenSSO applications knowing that there is support and net new features coming from an open-source development company. The other alternative they might consider is switching to Oracle Access Manager (OAM) but this will require parallel infrastructure to be put in place during the migration development, testing and switch to production.

Stay tuned as we at Nulli pull together a migrate vs upgrade analysis that our client can take advantage of during the decision making process.

Oracle Open World 2010

2010-09-18T09:37:00.000-06:00

Members of the Nulli team are off to attend the annual extravaganza known as Oracle Open World. Not really clear about the "Open" component of the conference title but it definitely is a time when San Francisco becomes Oracle World.

The session load can have interesting content based on either customers providing insightful case studies or Oracle product engineers giving product deployment tips. The latter are rather difficult to find and are really a treat you when you come across them. The majority of sessions in the past tend to have a very heavy marketing slant to them or a high-level product overview with few details to assist existing customers on best practices or deployment tips.

We are hoping that this year, as in the past, we will spend most of our time networking with Oracle clients to get insights into their experiences and to spend one-on-one time with Oracle Product Managers or Product developers. This combined with Partner meetings sponsored by Oracle to bring product specialist partners together for networking and relationship development will keep us very busy indeed.

If you are at the conference, and would like to discuss Oracle Identity and Security best practice deployments or the newest Oracle Identity 11g features for OAM, OIM, OAAM, OID or OVD give us a post via derek@nulli.com and we'll be certain to track each other down to discuss these topics and others over a beverage or two.
Otherwise we hope to see many of our clients on Monday night at 6PM at the TownHall Restaurant for a few drinks and finger food!

Oracle Gold Partner - Security and Identity

2010-01-04T15:06:00.000-07:00

Oracle has designated Nulli Secundus as an Oracle Gold Partner in the Oracle PartnerNetwork Specialized Program. Nulli having achieved Pillar Partner - Security and Identity status is now being recognized as a Gold level partner for our implementation services excellence for the Oracle Access Manager, Identity Manager, Internet Directory, Virtual Directory and the Oracle suite of identity products including the Oracle Entitlement Server.

Nulli Secundus is the leader in Identity Management possessing an exceptional record of success with assisting customers deploying their identity solutions. Nulli Secundus differentiates itself by leveraging the lessons learned with enhanced expertise into a series of implementation best practices and time saving quality enhancing Administration and Deployment tools available only to our clients.

We invite you to contact us to determine how Nulli Secundus can speed your Identity Management deployments and reduce costs associated with the implementation and on-going support of your identity systems and services

Oracle Pillar Partner Verification Designation for Nulli

2009-11-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

Oracle has selected Nulli Secundus as part of an elite partner group designated to assist clients and prospects with evaluating and implementing Oracle Identity Management and Security solutions. Nulli Secundus is one of the first North American partners to receive the verification status and the only partner to hold this status for Identity Management and Security Oracle Pillar products in Western Canada and Western US region.
"Our consultants demonstrated their second-to-none knowledge of the Oracle Identity and Security products through their dedicated effort and time required to prepare for the verification process", said Derek Small, Nulli Secundus founder. "The Oracle Pillar Partner designation is a great honour and recognition by Oracle of Nulli's success with the implementation of Oracle Identity and Security solutions for our mutual clients. We are eager to extend our service offerings to support the Oracle sales team and their customers with Identity Management strategic road maps, business cases, project planning and implementations."
Nulli Secundus' consultants leverage their collective experience and expertise with the Oracle Identity products of OID, OIM, OFS, OVD and OAAM to provide our client's strategic identity and Peoplesoft project expertise.

Identity Management Project Best Practices - Webinar

2009-10-31T12:06:00.000-06:00

Identity Management Best Practices: Practical Advice for Oracle Users

What: Identity Management experts from Nulli Secundus and Miro Consulting will discuss why Corporate Identity Management programs often fail and offer best practices for successful implementation of IdM technologies.

Who: Nulli Secundus Inc - Derek Small, President
Miro Consulting, Inc. - Eliot Arlo Colon, President

When: November 3, 2009
1:00 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. ET (10:00 - 10:45 a.m. PT)

To register and attend, go to https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/134518530

Details:

Companies looking at or in the midst of deploying identity management tools often face significant challenges with their projects. Corporate identity management (IdM) programs often fail due to a lack of cohesive strategy or a set implementation process. While the technologies aren't difficult to install, deployment challenges arise from the need to customize each set-up and configuration based on the company's unique business needs.

This presentation will be of interest to Project Managers, Systems Analysts, Project Sponsors and anyone involved with projects using identity tools such as; Single-Sign-On, Access Management, Provisioning of Identities, Federation of Identities, Entitlements and Role Management and other related Identity processes.

Open Source Identity Connector for Replicon Web TimeSheet

2009-08-03T13:37:00.000-06:00

I've had some time now to play with the "Identity Connectors" project Connector Toolkit, and it is amazing how much the framework provides in terms of structure, tools, and code generation. I've used it to develop a user provisioning connector for Replicon's Web TimeSheet suite (which we use for time tracking at Nulli). The connector will work with both the Replicon-hosted (SaaS) and self-hosted instances of WTS v8.3+.

The Connector Toolkit offers a simple ant command (or NetBeans plugin) to quickly build a project shell (including unit tests), giving the developer the option of which functions they would like to implement. After that, there is some fill-in-the-blanks type development that produces a "Connector Bundle" distributable (including javadoc and dependent libraries) that is simply dropped into a folder in Sun Identity Manager. Multiple versions of the same bundle can exist in a Sun IdM deployment without conflicting.

Great job to the Sun engineers involved in designing the framework! In every Identity project I have worked on, there always seems to be at least one adapter that doesn't match the supported software version installed. I think that the flexibility around dependencies that it provides along with a (hopefully) growing list of connectors/contributors, the wait-time to support updated software versions will decrease significantly. It would be very nice to see other Identity Provisioning vendors get involved with this project and/or implement support for the bundles (Oracle?).

Thanks to Chris at Replicon for developing and providing information on their very elegant API.

Download the connector bundle here. (coming soon - pending approval for including Apache libraries in bundle)

The source code is available from subversion repository or web.

-Rob

Sun Certifed Identity Management 7 Integrator Status Achieved!

2009-07-17T17:31:00.000-06:00

Congratulations to Janelle and Rob for achieving the status of Sun Certified Identity Management Integrator! Both have applied their deep experience with successfully architecting, designing and implementing the Sun Identity Manager 7 application at numerous client sites to gain this recognition from Sun.

We are very proud of the effort you both applied to the studies, reviews and exams required to gain this very special recognition. Thanks for the efforts and the inspiration for the rest of us to achieve the same.

COREid Migration Service - The long awaited upgrade

2009-07-03T09:39:00.000-06:00

We're pleased to announce that we have released the upgraded version of the COREid Migration Service. This incarnation also has a new name: Stitcher.

This is the same service we have been running for the last three years with great success. The upgrade consists primarily of a change in platform (Tomcat on Windows to Glassfish on Solaris 10 and some more serious hardware). The 'issues to fix' list was remarkably short - a testament to the stability and integrity of the approach.

So, if you are an OAM customer and are not yet familiar with how straightforward it can be to maintain consistency across your environments, you might want to check it out.

Nulli Stongly Supportive of Oracle-Sun Customers

2009-04-20T14:56:00.000-06:00

Certainly the center of conversation here and in our client base has been the announcement of Oracle buying Sun. Nulli Secundus sees this acquisition as a positive event for us and for our client base. We have been through a series of Oracle acquisitions starting with PeopleSoft, Oblix, Thor and Octet String all of whom were individual Nulli Secundus partners prior to being acquired by Oracle. The net result being that Nulli Secundus is an acknowledged leader of identity integration and support services for these Oracle identity solutions.

The acquisition of Sun and its' related identity specialty software again brings us into the "sweet-spot" of bringing the best together. Nulli expertise with Sun Identity Manager (IdM), Java Enterprise Server LDAP (JES LDAP, SunOne LDAP) and Sun OpenSSO married up with our PeopleSoft and Oracle Identity applications means that we can provide customers with either pure stack solutions or mix and match best of breed applications for delivery on your business objectives.

Nulli Secundus will keep its' customers and prospects posted on developments related to the Sun acquisition by Oracle as more information is made public.

Website re-write launched

2009-04-15T13:02:00.000-06:00

We've spent some time working on what we have to say about ourselves on our website. Like anything on the web ought to be, it's ever-evolving. We think the latest is a more accurate reflection of who we are and what we're doing.

If you haven't visited lately, come on over and check it out.

Nulli @ RSA Conference April 19-24 - San Francisco

2009-04-14T10:00:00.000-06:00

A couple of our folks will again be heading to RSA this year in San Francisco. It usually proves to be a great conference since it provides a melding of security and identity management information. The sessions vary from the deep cryptography types to the higher level executive overviews and various sessions in-between. If you'd like to catch up with us whilst at the conference, contact Richard or Sandeep via our contact us page here. Here is the RSA conference link where you can gather more info on the conference.

OAM Migration Service hits 300 migrations milestone

2009-04-08T12:14:00.000-06:00

The Nulli COREid Migration Service hit the 300 migration operations mark at the end of March 2009. No, not huge in the grand scheme of life on the big Internet, but, it is a significant symbolic milestone for us.

We've had our OAM (sic. COREid) Migration Service in the wild for some time now (since August 2006). It's hard to believe we're coming up on three years. In that time we've enrolled some of our highest profile customers and we have all been pleased with integrity of the approach. The data for some of the most demanding production OAM deployments in North America flows through our solution.

Starting a year ago we began to promote the use of Oracle's OAM Configuration Manager tool with the belief that we would see our solution eclipsed. This has not turned out to be the case as several critical bugs and issues continue to dog the Oracle solution.

Now, we believe, the Migration Service needs an update. Stay tuned to this feed for information about the update schedule.

Analysis of User-Centric Interoperability Event

2008-08-18T12:30:00.000-06:00

The OSIS I3 Interop was a five-month event in which organizations, individuals, and projects working in the solution spaces of Information Cards and OpenID collaborated to define and demonstrate their ability to transact successfully regardless of differences in hardware or software platform. Participants worked within each solution space to define and test acceptable behaviors for various situations that crop up when loosely coupled solutions communicate with each other via open protocols. Interop participants created results within two different matrices: feature test results which recorded adherence to acceptable behavior when explicitly tested, and cross-solution results which recorded overall interoperability between solutions with complimentary roles. Combined, the participants recorded over 1200 mostly successful results.

As new solutions enter this space and existing solutions add to their feature sets, the OSIS Interop process and results serve as a metric to inform developers what features will contribute to a consistent experience for users and administrators. OSIS Interops have served as a focal point for discussion and feature concentration and a forcing function to solidify the protocols. Overall, much was accomplished but there is still work to be done. By examining participation, contribution to best practices, process and collaboration, discoveries, and obstacles, the Interop process can be refined and improved to give even more value to those involved; by doing so, diversity in product offerings will not result in difficulty for end users.

Find Pamela Dingle's Analysis of a User-Centric Interoperability Event here.

Update: Also check out Dave Kearns review of Pam's report here.

Horizontal Migration Solution

2006-08-14T10:52:00.000-06:00

The Oracle Access Manager / COREid Migration Service is a web based interface to Nulli Secundus' answer to the challenge of horizontally migrating Oracle Access Manager configuration data between disparate environments.

Nulli Secundus Professional Services consultants have faced this challenge for years and have solved it in a variety of ways. The Service is our way of supporting the Oracle Access Manager (COREid) customer community with the same quality solution that we use in the consulting realm.

Our goal is to smooth the way to recreating identical COREid application behavior across disparate installation environments.

Oracle Access Manager customers and professional service providers are welcome to access the migration service.

Please read up on our approach for more information.