Sun acquires close to home to increase the velocity of identity management deployments
Earlier this week Sun
announced the acquisition of Neogent, an Austin, Texas-based services company which specialises in the implementation of identity management and enterprise content management solutions. Neogent does not just provide implementation experts. The company exploits that expertise, together with the experience gleaned from deployments, to put together implementation packages in it's
Velocity Lab, which combine pre-installed/configured hardware and software and professional services to accelerate deployments. The company currently offers three such packages: for identity management implementation (Velocity Identity Package) and installation (Velocity Identity Installer) as well as a package which adds Day's Enterprise Content Management product (Velocity Enterprise Package). It also provides a managed services offering (with the non-intuitive name of Constituent Automation Suite) for identity and content management and a solution for role-based access control (RBAC). Neogent's customers include the likes of AMD, Cisco and the the US government.
Neogent, as any good services company should, mentions a range of partners whose technology it works with. But in the case of identity management it's pretty clear that its focus is Sun - it's Velocity identity offerings and the RBAC solution are based on Sun's Java System Identity Manager and it is a reseller of Sun's identity management suite. The reason for this focus becomes clear from a quick look at the company's
executive team: the VPs of consulting and product development plus the marketing director herald from Waveset (which
was acquired by Sun in November 2003 and whose personnel continue to drive the identity management business).
These very close links to Sun's identity management business are not enough to justify the acquistion and Neogent has neither the size or the reach to provide Sun with a significant identity management consulting capability. So why did Sun loosen the purse strings? It's primarily about Velocity. Sun has acquired packaged intellectual property which can be added to the kit bag of its implementation consultants, together with productised services that its sales people will be more comfortable selling. I say primarily because Neogent's Constituent Automation Suite is a nice complement to Sun's
Managed Services offering. The future for Neogent's content management business, however, is not so clear: it's not a focus for Sun and Neogent works with FileNET which is of course
now part of IBM.
Our discussions with organisations embarking on identity management initiaitives indicate that they are crying out for the best practice advice and guidance, as well as implementation capability, to help them get to grips with the complex of array of drivers and technologies. The acquisition of Neogent should help Sun respond more rapidly to those cries for help.
