Matthew Pollicove

Day 1, all I can really say is Wow! I attended sessions on the latest addition to the SAP's Identity Management line up, some of it's oldest technology and the future of the NetWeaver IDM.  After today's session, my mind is completely blown away. I started the day with two informative sessions on SAP's Single Sign-on Offering based on the technology asset acquisition from SECUDE about 18 months ago. SAP has clearly recognized that information security must begin at the login and proceed from there.  I'm looking forward to learning more about it over the next year or so.  It's a major technology on my radar and should be considered as a key strategic goal for all SAP implementations. The next session was based on a favorite technology of mine, the Virtual Directory Server (VDS).  Virtual Directory technology has been the "next big thing" in Identity Management for many... (more)

The future of SAP GRC

There has been quite a bit of  discussion about the potential futures of SAP IDM and SAP GRC. SAP has just started a survey so that they can get customer input. I would encourage all customers using or considering these products to take the poll. I've worked with the integration between the two products several times now, and I can honestly say that I have never achieved the results that I wanted. As I've thought about the issues that have kept me from getting what I (and of course, my clients) want, it all seems to come down to the architecture. The way SAP would have it, GRC is t... (more)

Using VDS to Promote Efficiency

It's been a while since I posted here, but it's not because I'm not working on NetWeaver IDM or writing. I've been doing a lot of the former and a bit of the latter.  In order to help promote the growth of a NW IDM technical knowledge base, I've been posting most of my IDM specific things on the SAP Community Network Blog. I'll still be posting here from time to time, but it will more likely be architectural or opinion related pieces about IDM. To that point I'd like to talk about the seldom discussed Virtual Directory Server. I've always loved VDS and it's MaXware predecessor, MV... (more)

The Importance of the OSS Note

One of the things I've been hearing (and experiencing) lately is that there are a lot of questions about how SAP IDM works.  Sometimes it's a functionality question, sometimes it's an enhancement request, other times it's a bug report. Taking a look on the SAP IDM SDN forum, one can see several instances of all of these issues. However, some feel that the actual issues are never recognized by SAP. This leads to feelings of frustration and that IDM is too complicated. There's actually a pretty simple resolution to this.  When you have a problem, log an OSS note, that's what the... (more)

SAP TechEd: Preview

I'm here in Las Vegas, Nevada for SAP TechEd 2012 and I could not be happier. It's looking like quite the busy week of IDM related training.  Attendees are arriving and I've already seen a few people I know from SAP, past projects and the greater IDM Community.  From what I've already heard we're in for a week of exciting learning, future product direction and late breaking functionality in the product. In addition to working with IDM this week, I'll be attending several sessions on the SSO solution that SAP purchased from SECUDE last year.  Now that a year has gone by, the produ... (more)