There was big news out of Oracle last week. Not the announcement of Oracle Access Management Suite (relatively
big news), but a personnel change that speaks volumes for the success that Oracle has had in the identity sphere.

During the time that Oracle’s been acquiring all of the parts of it’s Identity practice, that area has been led by Hasan Rizvi as Vice President, Identity Management and Security Products. I’ve mentioned once or twice that I think he’s done an excellent job, and evidently Larry Ellison agrees with me since Rizvi has been promoted to Senior Vice President and will be trying to bring in all of the stuff from the recent BEA acquisition. It’s a nice reward for a job well done.

Ever since the acquisition of Netegrity, Rizvi was aided and abetted by Amit Jasuja (Oracle’s VP, Product Development, Identity Management), who had been Netegrity’s Vice-President of Product Management for Netegrity's identity and access management solutions. Now Jasuja will take over from Rizvi and lead the entire identity management development team. Another nice reward for a job well done, and one which bodes well for Oracle’s identity practice.

What the two brought to fruition last week was the Oracle Access Management Suite, containing “next-generation” technologies that enable risk-based authentication, proactive online fraud prevention, and fine-grained authorization, as well as best-of-breed functionality including Web access management and identity federation. (Compare Identity Management products)

Not only is it a great stand-alone offering, it’s hot-pluggable with leading applications and platforms (such as IBM Websphere and Microsoft SharePoint), and also includes deep integration with Oracle’s PeopleSoft, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle’s Siebel, and Oracle’s JD Edwards applications and services.

Additionally, Oracle announced the first availability of what’s called “Oracle Entitlements Server,” a fine-grained authorization package and a key component of the suite. This service (based on the acquired BEA AquaLogic Enterprise Security) enables application developers to externalize and centralize fine-grained authorization policies that would previously have been embedded within applications.

Key components of the Oracle Access Management Suite include:

• Oracle Entitlements Server
• Oracle Adaptive Access Manager
• Oracle Access Manager
• Oracle Identity Federation

Whether or not you believe in “Identity Suites,” this is one that deserves a good look.

Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.