The start of the academic school year in my house was accompanied by two technology events with parallels to security management. First, a hard drive on our six-year-old home laptop died. Thanks to online storage, no data was lost, but I did have to procure a new hard drive.
I expected ordering a new hard drive for such an old PC to be a lost cause, but this vendor immediately pulled up the serial number, found the proper part and shipped it out to me. A very simple process repeated daily in thousands of industries.
What made this process stand out was what happened next. The replacement part was delivered to my residence via one of the major overnight delivery services (with signature confirmation). Within 20 minutes of delivery, I received a phone call from the laptop vendor offering assistance to install the new hard drive. This call caught me by surprise, but proved that this vendor had taken the effort to integrate the 3rd party delivery status with their customer support application to ensure customer support would receive notification and be able to follow up with the customer.
Did this integration require a lot of effort? Probably not as all the delivery services can be easily integrated into other systems for this purpose. What was significant was this vendor had completed the integration and was using it not just to confirm delivery, but to take a proactive approach with customers. Does integration like this drive more revenue or reduce costs? Hard to tell on the former, but on the latter, the proactive approach helps reduce support calls. What is definitely true is this approach improves customer satisfaction and brand loyalty which, while hard to quantify, are very important metrics.
This incident confirmed for me the value of integration and shows why we invest so heavily in integrating CA security management products, whether it is Enterprise Log Manager with Access Control or Role & Compliance Manager with Identity Manager. While it is sometimes hard to quantify the value of integration, there is no doubt that integration can deliver value to customers in multiple ways.
In my second consumer electronics incident, I received a new mobile device. My enthusiasm for this device was tempered when I realized that it uses a miniUSB charger as well as a different size headphone jack for music and hands-free phone, meaning a new series of home and car chargers as well as headsets!
As someone who has a cell phone since the days of the 3V bag phone from Bell Atlantic, my home desk is littered with chargers from every possible vendor and type (contact me if you are looking for an old charger-chances are I have it!). As I looked at my chargers on my desk, I noticed how these chargers have evolved from proprietary model specific chargers into standard based modes like USB and now miniUSB. And while I am not thrilled about another set of chargers, it proves that technology standards matter. It makes it easier for me to use other third-party products (like car chargers and headsets) without have to repurchase an entire new set every time I get a new device. It also reduces my need to lug around six different chargers and cables when I travel.
This is certainly true in security management where standards such as SAML, LDAP, XACML, SPML and efforts like Kantara Initiative have directly accelerated adoption and deployment of identity and access management solutions. Standards provide assurance to customers that products will interoperate as well as provide flexibility. And while the hazards of proprietary approaches are more visceral in the consumer world than in enterprise software, the same guiding principle holds: Standards and integration are no longer "nice to have", but an absolute requirement for today's enterprise-wide security deployments.