New at the forum

[Former Member]

Hello,

I'am new here and I looking for a comparison between IDM from SAP and from IBM (Tivoli) or from other firms . What's the advantage and disadvantage?

Thank you for all the help in advance.

Regards

Uwe

Edited by: Uwe Pack on Mar 11, 2008 8:40 AM

[Former Member]

Hello Uwe,

Eric is right. However the task of comparying two IDM solutions is not an easy one. Given the various features is is rather complex to really tell which one is better. We have been doing product comparisons for the last 5 years including Novell, IBM, SUN, Siemens, Microsoft, Voelcker Information, HP and now of course SAP.

The biggest differentiation beween every other product and SAP is definitely the integraiton in the ABAP stack. This is where Eric is right. You will not find any other product that does this so well (of course). All other IDM vendors offers agents/connectors/adapters/drivers for SAP CUA and SAP HR but that is only a communication to the SAP system and not the type of integration that SAP offers.

Again - this is onyl one aspect of a comparison. In general we use some 25 main topics for a "management compatible" comparison and some 50 different aspects for a technical comparison.

Things are even getting more complex as IDM solutions are more and more extended by role management solutions. So it is also very important for a comparison to take strategic issues for a specific customer into account (i.e. will the customer create a company wide role model to be used in user provisioning).

I know that this will probably not really help you - but that is the way it is.

best regards

Erich Vogel

[Former Member]

Hi Uwe,

From my knowledge of the product there are several main factors:

1. Being an SAP product is offers the best availavle integration to WAS ABAP/J2EE for data retrieval and provision.

2. The product contains 2 major components: The Data Synch. Engine (DSE) and the Virtual Directory. The fist actine as a very flexible provision and workflow engine. The latter being a very powerfull meta directory at it's very least and offerring a lot more functionality then any other similar products, including optional real time provisioning.

Do you have any issue-specific points of interest?

I'm sure Frank and the rest of SAP team will have more to add on this question.

Eric