Repatriating IT Skills - Now is the time

The following news article published in the Globe and Mail prompted me to write about the perception of IT Outsourcing as discussed with me by Information Technology professionals employed by companies in India, Canada and the United States.

India’s IT outsourcing giant Wipro takes aim at Canada Add to ...
GORDON PITTS
The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Mar. 13 2013, 5:59 PM EDT
Last updated Thursday, Mar. 14 2013, 1:49 PM EDT   

Interesting article and very telling with regards to how business and government globally need to consider IT Outsourcing and impacts it has on community, country and long-term viablility of the knowlege based economy.   

It is also telling that he views, correctly I think, that university grads need to be brought up to speed on application of technology beyond the academic training delivered in Canada.   This highlights the concern that is facing most companies here in North America of having shipped our knowledge and expertise base offshore to the cheapest labour source, we have now a steep path to climb to bring this knowledge back onshore and localized for use where it is needed daily.    His sending grads to India for 6 mths training used to be the other way around not 15 years ago.  It is more then just the indoctrination of the WiPro methodology, it is to give them practical experience with IT technology which isn't' readily available here as companies (other then Nulli) are afraid to invest in their people due to the fear of poaching and more importantly the cost to their bottom line in the eyes of shareholders and the management accountants that mostly have run corporations over the past 20 years.

I heard him speak last year at Oracle OpenWorld where he clearly indicated that the world would need to work with WiPro in the area of IT since the world had lost the knowledge that WiPro had cultivated and grown and now sold back to the companies at increasing cost and with lower productivity.  The latter was shielded from companies here since the premise was, I am getting 3 workers doing the same job as one of mine for the same price as one therefore I am better off since I am getting a 3 for 1 deal.

Anyway, it is worth a paper of thought for certain.   WiPro needs to continue to grow markets like Canada to allow for it to continue to leverage the model that worked in the past and is now loosing appeal as results are not there and governments, read USA, are creating incentives for companies to repatriate the skill economy to America.....

Just a few quick thoughts,

OIM 11g R2: Too many role request emails?

In OIM 11g R2, Oracle introduced a new feature called "Catalog", using which a user of an Organization can search and request for roles using a shopping cart type of functionality.  There is also an option to generate emails to notify the user at what stage his/ her Role Request is at.  Since, the Role request could go through multiple approvals, emails are sent for each stage of approval.  Currently with OOTB Role Request workflow, upto 9 emails sent for the whole Role Approval processes completion and around 5 to 8 emails generated for Role Rejection.  Though this could be a useful feature to some customers, it could be a nuisance for others who would be expecting at the most 2 emails for either Role Approval or Rejection.

This post describes a way to limit the number of emails generated to 2, one when the initial Role Request is made and one when a final decision (either Approve or Reject) is made.

Giving Back to Our Community

Traditionally, Nulli employees have celebrated the Christmas season by participating in an employee gift exchange.  This year we decided to do something different.  We thought it would be a great way to show our team spirit and spread the Nulli cheer by donating what we would normally spend on a Christmas gift towards a hamper that would help a low income family.

ForgeRock - New RockStar!

Lasse Andresen advised me today that he will be shifting roles from the CEO position with ForgeRock to that of CTO.   This is great news as everyone who has worked with Lasse knows he is a "geek" at heart and will get to focus his passion for product innovation and excellence on the ForgeRock Open Identity Stack.   The ForgeRock board of directors led by Lasse conducted an extensive search for their new CEO.  Their dillegence was rewarded with Mr. Mike Ellis join the team as the new Chief Executive Officer and member of the board.

Lasse spoke highly of Mike's solid track record with the likes of SAP, I2, Oracle and Apple.  Mike's past experiences obviously give him the experience to help extend the success that ForgeRock has been experiencing over the past 2 years.   "ForgeRock is redfining Identity and Access Management with unparalled innovation and an open source model that is revolutionizing security" said Ellis in the ForgeRock press release.   Rock on Mike!

I have to say that we at Nulli are really excited to hear the news that ForgeRock continues to accelerate in the market-place by providing customer-centric products that are reliable, rapidly deployable and readily supportable.  Nulli Identity Solution Architects have been using the ForgeRock OpenAMj and OpenDJ products with great success with their clients and are happy to hear that ForgeRock will continue with their focus on customer driven innovation for their products.

I look forward to working with Mike and his team to continue to promote successful, cost-effective and sustainable Identity solutions.

Amble With Angus

Nulli will be participating again this year in the 11th annual Amble With Angus fun run in support of the Calgary Food Bank

Nulli Paints The Town

Yesterday, we had a Nulli Day “Painting the Town”.  It was a “feel good” day, lots of sun, laughs, appreciation and caring; a day away from the office; a day amongst great people.  Thank you to everyone at Nulli who were able to participate.  Mrs. K. was so happy and thankful to now have a freshly painted home to welcome her family and friends. Take a look at my pictures! and  Look at even better pictures from Volunteer Calgary!

The City of Calgary City Links is an amazing program of giving, helping low income seniors live in their homes safely and securely while providing a safe and supportive work environment for men and women facing barriers to employment.  Volunteer Calgary helps as well through their “Paint The Town” initiative where companies like Nulli can have a great day painting the exterior of a senior’s home.

Speaking with ForgeRock’s CEO at RSA 2012

I met with Lasse Andresen, CEO of ForgeRock while at RSA and was really pleased to have had the opportunity to catch-up with him on all things ForgeRock.

The big news was that ForgeRock has secured $7 million of Series “A” funding from Accel Partners of Palo Alto, California, USA.    I see this as yet another vote of confidence for the direction that ForgeRock is leading the Identity and Access Management (IAM) community.

I spoke to Lasse about how Nulli continues to see the ForgeRock OpenDJ and OpenAM products as highly reliable and easy to deploy solutions for our customers.   The subscription based license model has been extremely well received and is one of many differentiators that ForgeRock offers its’ partners and clients.

RSA 2012 - Philippe Courtot - Chairman and CEO Qualys - Keynote

The Urgent Need for a More Effective Approach to Security
Philippe Courtot, Chairman and CEO, Qualys, Inc.

Philippe provided an excellent presentation about companies that are currently applying disruptive technologies and thus changing how we view a “norm”.
He spoke about both the Hiriko Project and a company called Pininfarina and how they are disrupting the personal transportation market for in-city transportation.  He also updated attendees on how firms are re-thinking the whole security model and how they are trying to address issues like e-mail spoofing and SSL Certificate Authorities and the need for collaboration via a new trustworthy internet organization that he launched today. (2012-02-29) 

The Hiriko Project  - http://www.hiriko.com/

This “car-sharing” project has global breadth in that the design is from MIT, manufacturing in Spain and is involving many global participants in a consortium arrangement.   Applying new technology to create disruptive models to personal in-city transportation.  Set to go into production in 2013 these 2 person electric cars designed at MIT reduce parking requirements, provide short-term access to personal transportation and help the environment.  The consortium is supposed to be speaking with San Francisco as another city for us of the cars and program.

RSA 2012 - San Francisco

I have been attending the RSA Conference in San Francisco (February 27-March 2nd) this week and found it to be a very worthwhile networking event.   The Nulli team having reviewed the conference sessions believed there was limited content focused on the area of Identity Management and thus we didn’t send any other participants to the conference this year.   In previous years we have had participants attend as there was a strong showing of Identity and Access Management (IAM) sessions of real interest to our team and clients. 
My time at RSA 2012 has been filled meeting with a variety of Identity and Security vendors to determine how well they fill niche or end-to-end IAM functions for our clients.  See following posts that elaborate on who I met with and my findings.
 

Nulli Speaking at COUG - Dec 15th, 2011

Trevor Roskewich, Senior Identity Consultat at Nulli will be presenting to the Calgary Oracle User Group (COUG) at the Suncor Energy Centre at 8:00 AM on December 15, 2011.   His presentation, co-produced with Lisa Gryschuk, Senior Human Information Consultant at Nulli, addresses the critical business integration between Human Capital Management and Identity Management.

HCM applications are a principle source of an organizations’ identity data and thus critical to your identity, access governance and security processes.  Leveraging job classifications / codes an organization's identity and security processes are dependent on tightly integrating at the business and system levels to provide Request Based Access Control and Role Based Access Control (RBAC).   Identity Access Management architects and analysts are working more strategically with their peers in Human Capital Management to provide their organizations with fluid management of human information while leveraging the two systems to increase productivity for all employees in the organization.

This presenation will be of interest to HCM Analysts, HR Supervisors, HR Managers, Middleware Architects, IAM Architects, Enterprise Architects and Security professionals looking to automate securing applications, databases and providing transparent information on who has access to what information within the organization.

Presentation:  Identity of the Enterprise
Human Capital Management (HCM), also known as Human Resources (HR), is a critical application forming the foundation of every business’ success. Trevor will be speaking to best practices for HCM/HR and how they can support maximizing the financial and business process returns of deploying and managing enterprise provisioning and role management.

Nulli @ The Gartner IAM Summit 2011 – San Diego

You’ll find Craig, Joanne and myself attending the Gartner IAM Summit 2011 November 13th through 16th in San Diego.

At the IAM Summit, we look forward to speaking with attendees who share our passion for deploying cost effective access and identity management solutions.  We want to speak with analysts and attendees about tools used to deploy and support strategies, tactics and solutions.  We also going to   approach solution providers to hear how they address the demanding business requirements and needs for reduced costs of ownership that so many of our clients are seeking.

This Ain’t Your Grandma’s HCM:  Identity for the Enterprise

Aside from the wonderful grammar, this 11:15 AM session being held at Western Canada Regional User Group (WCRUG) in Vancouver, BC on November 10, 2011 will be of interest to everyone in the enterprise.

Human Capital Management (HCM), also known as Human Resources (HR), is a critical application forming the foundation of every business’ success. Knowing who your people are and what role they play along with associated cost/benefit metrics is what HCM/HR applications are best at performing.  Nulli believes this Human Information (HI) is central to the success of many applications.  High quality Human Information is a key requirement for reliable security and identity processes as well as for HCM.

ForgeRock OpenICF Community Launch - Identity Connector Framework (ICF)

ForgeRock, the open source Identity-Oriented middleware company, has joined a global community to launch a new open source project today.   The OpenICF, Identity Connector Framework (ICF) community will provide a home for the development of multi-purpose connectors used by identity providers such as ForgeRock's OpenIDM, Oracle Waveset (formerly Sun Identity Manager) and other governance and compliance software.

Oracle Specialized Gold Partner - Security and Identity

Oracle has designated Nulli as an Oracle Gold Partner in the Oracle PartnerNetwork Specialized Program. Nulli having achieved Pillar Partner - Security and Identity status is now being recognized as a Gold Specialized partner for our implementation services excellence for the Oracle Access Manager, Identity Manager, Internet Directory, Virtual Directory and the Oracle suite of identity products including the Oracle Entitlement Server.

Introducing Stitcher - OAM Configuration Migration Solution

Many of our readers are aware that we have had the "COREid Migration Service" available for public use for the past three years. This service has been a resounding success with several high profile North American OAM customers relying on it to maintain consistency across their environments. The expression, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." best describes our attitude towards the initial release.