SAP have entered the Identity Management sphere with an announcement of a global strategic alliance to deliver a standards-based identity management solution.

The solution will be delivered through SAPs Netweaver platform, and is based on Siemens Identity Management solution called HiPath SIcurity DirX Identity. The alliance aims to allow organisations using SAP to integrate with their existing deployments and centralise the management of access to IT systems.

This is interesting, as it seems to indicate that SAP and Siemens will be immediately deploying a full RBAC implementation based on SAP’s internal job role specification:

With the integrated solution, each user is represented by a unique digital identity and assigned access privileges to applications and systems based on their job role in the organization. Employees are able to easily and transparently access all systems and applications needed to support their job roles without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure.

The user’s privileges are centrally maintained, continuously updated to reflect changes in the organization, automatically communicated across all relevant systems and withdrawn immediately if necessary.

If you’re concerned about which standards are being supported, check out this PDF about it.

Technorati Tags: Digital Identity, Identity, SAP, Netweaver, Siemens, Roles, RBAC, mySAP