Analyzing Identity

Recent conversations with prospective customers have made me think of the long time Burger King slogan, “have it your way”. For Burger King, it was a way to offer an alternative approach to the one-size-fits-all menu of its competitors – chiefly MacDonalds. In most fast food restaurants, it is difficult to make modifications to your order – you have to take it the way the restaurant makes it. Don’t like pickles on your burger? Too bad, take them off yourself.

Does the same situation apply when buying enterprise software and middleware? I am afraid so. By now you are all familiar with the paternal tone used by large vendors when they are describing “their” vision, strategy and architecture. “They” know best and customer should just follow obediently. Of course, doing so also potentially locks the customer in for the long term and the associated high license and maintenance costs.

However, customers are starting to push back. One architect said it best this way, “I appreciate that you (Axiomatics) adjust your solution to our preferred architecture, unlike other vendors that attempt to force our business model into their architecture.” That’s right, there is a choice. Standards such as XACML, SAML, and web services along with new delivery models, such as cloud platforms, are giving enterprises more ways to deploy applications and connect with their partners. Enterprises are finding that they can’t be beholden to a particular vendor’s architecture, but must work with vendors that can accommodate and adjust to the rapidly changing needs of their business operations.

This entry was posted on March 1, 2011 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Architecture, Authorization. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.