Microsoft Identity Management, BHold and Omada
The past few weeks have seen a lot of hussle and bussle in the industry with the Microsoft “certain asset” acquisition of BHold. Although the move to expand the offering of the Microsoft platform is a positive one in my mind, it has left a lot of people confused and raised many questions. I have been working with a customer on a long term identity management strategy and this announcement has cast quite a bit of uncertainty over the process (in terms of cost, development effort in a specific direction and ultimately platform choice).
I do not think that the acquiring of platform enhancements is a bad idea – I welcome it – but at present there is no roadmap and clear strategy for the integration of these features into the platform (not that we know what these features are yet). At the same time there is the FIM 2010 R2 release that is currently in the pipeline. In this release we see some welcome features, including the addition of FIM 2010 reporting (which is crucial). My concern is how this direction architecturally will align with possible acquired potions from BHold.
For now at least based in my discussions there is no clear answers to most of these questions. It is clear that at present the BHold components are not available for sale from either Microsoft or BHold and that these – in my opinion – will not be available in the FIM 2010 R2 timeframe. (The features within this release cannot be held back to try to accommodate the integration of BHold components).