Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2013: Transformative IT Forces and IAM in Barcelona

A couple of weeks ago we attended one of the biggest gatherings of CIOs and Senior IT Executives – the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2013 in Barcelona. The event was a chance to discuss the convergence and impact of four transformative forces – cloud, social, mobile and information – and how identity management is at the heart of managing these changes.

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2013

Whilst a lot of inspiring topics were discussed, one of the most interesting was no doubt "The Future of Managing Identity" session presented by Gartner analyst Ant Allan. With a recent Gartner report also revealing IAM stands at about $500 million today and predicting the market will hit $1.24 billion in 2017, the session provoked immediate interest in the development of the IAM space from the audience. The 1,000+ attendees looked to find out what the future has in store for identity management.

One of the biggest takeaways was the need for businesses to accept their past and embrace their future. New technologies are shaping digital access and the roadmap for progression is clear, with identity management becoming more about efficiency, effectiveness and enablement. Companies can use both internal and external IAM for security and compliance in heavily regulated industries, enabling employees to be more productive and efficient with a ‘best of breed’ app solution, and partners and customers to access their information easily and securely. With the market growth and importance of IAM for businesses, Ant was clear in conveying that it is fast becoming a competitive marketplace for identity management.

And it’s not just the competitive landscape that’s changing, but how identity management is being used. Looking forward, we can expect to see identity management services provide businesses with intelligence and analytics – and we’re excited that we’ve already begun to see these types of integrations at Okta, like the recently announced Splunk App for Okta, which helps improve governance and compliance.

We can also expect to see the introduction of the ‘identity of things,’ driven largely by the explosion of ‘the Internet of Things.’ Gartner predicts the Internet of Things, or idea that all objects and equipment (such as laundry machines, garage door openers, etc.) will be connected to the Internet, will derive about $1.9 trillion of economic value for companies and governments by 2020. As these types of devices develop, identity will become even more important. Everyone is also fully aware of the considerations and concerns surrounding social media privacy, and how fast the mobile landscape is evolving. Consumer apps now use social login, and the new iPhone fingerprint scanner is a great example of how much the area is developing. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2020, 60% of all digital IDs interacting with enterprises will come through external identity providers through competitive marketing - up from 10% today. An ‘identity of things’ for all of these devices will redefine the concept of IDM to include what people own, share and use.

This all comes shortly after Gartner announced that IAM will be one of the top three most sought-after cloud services moving forward into 2014. So, it’s clear that the next few years are definitely going to be interesting!