Thank you for joining the 2020 work-from-home experiment (whether you wanted to or not)

Brandon JonesBusiness Strategy, Cloud and Virtualization, Identity & Access Management, Industry Trends, OfferingsLeave a Comment

work from home experiment made easier with help from M&S Consulting

You already know the situation we’re in: we have all been plunged into the world’s largest work-from-home (WFH) experiment with very little time to adapt. This grand experiment has changed the rules for almost every working situation. Workers and companies that already had the ability for effective remote work are finding new challenges, now that seemingly everyone has joined the party. We have been refining the way our company works remotely since we began in 2002. Knowing how to get started, what’s important, and having the ability to reduce friction for your workforce will help you navigate through this time … Read More

Taking Advantage of Our Higher Education AWS Standard Plays (Begin Your Journey to the Cloud)

Brandon JonesBusiness Strategy, Cloud and Virtualization, Higher Education, Identity & Access Management, News and Updates, OfferingsLeave a Comment

M&S helps direct you on your journey to the cloud

Is your institution moving to the cloud? Are you adopting a cloud strategy, such as Cloud First, where the institution takes the plunge and jumps in with both feet, or perhaps an Opportunistic Cloud or Experimental Cloud strategy where they test the waters with select projects? Perhaps your institution has instead elected to stay out of the cloud entirely and to simply watch from a distance. Each of these strategies can be appropriate in the right context, but adopting a cloud strategy that works for your institution should be a priority. With any of these strategies, you need to ensure … Read More

IDaaS – Vendor + Product + Feature Matrix – November 2016

Alex PingleyIdentity & Access Management, Industry Trends, Oracle, Technical TipsLeave a Comment

Cloud computing graphic with icons

As the world of IDaaS continues to evolve at a rapid pace, we’ve put together the latest IDaaS vendor – product – feature matrix for the largest active vendors in the IDaaS space. This information is current as of November 2016 and is put together by a combination of real world industry experiences, documentation reviews and other available information… IBM and Oracle are of note this year for every different reasons. IBM has recently consolidated it’s platform and added many of the emerging technologies into their platforms to offer what appears on paper as the strongest offering, while Oracle has … Read More

On-Premises Identity & Access Management – Vendor + Product + Feature Matrix

Alex PingleyIdentity & Access Management, Industry Trends, News and Updates, Oracle, Technical Tips1 Comment

Security keyboard button

As with any packaged, on-premises suite, finding the best Identity Management products for your enterprise is a not a trivial task. This is especially true when different products from different vendors, that accomplish different objectives or services, have remarkably similar (and therefore confusing) naming conventions. To make matters worse, not unlike other COTS enterprise suites, the ‘cloudification’ of these products has begun and many vendors have started to offer a version of these products as a PaaS or SaaS offering. Additionally, many of these vendors also offer an IaaS type deployment of these packaged products in their on-prem form. M&S has … Read More

Microsoft Identity Manager… Coming Soon

Ben MarckIdentity & Access Management, OfferingsLeave a Comment

Microsoft Identity Manager - Coming Soon

The IDM team at M&S Consulting is excited about Microsoft’s upcoming release / update / rebranding of Forefront Identity Manager to Microsoft Identity Manager. We’ve stood up a lab using the latest (as of this writing) CTP3 and so far have enjoyed playing around with the various new features and wanted to share our quick thoughts. Outside of the modernization and support for the latest platforms and infrastructure, such as, Server 2012 R2, SharePoint 2013, SQL Sever 2014, Microsoft has included several new features to add to the product offering. These include Privileged Account Management / Access and Cloud and … Read More

Identity & Access Management – Vendor & Product Matrix

Kyle FerncezBusiness Strategy, News and UpdatesLeave a Comment

As with any packaged suite, finding the best Identity Management products for your enterprise is a not a trivial task. This is especially true when different products from different vendors, that accomplish different objectives or services have remarkably similar (and therefore confusing) naming conventions. To help layout the current Identity Management vendor / product landscape as we see it, we’ve put together the following matrix of products by vendors. Service Identity Governance User Life Cycle, Self-Service, Request / Role Based, Provisioning & Deprovisioning, Password Management, Attestation & Compliance / Separation of Duties Oracle Identity Manager IBM® Security Identity Manager CA … Read More

Oracle Identity Management 11gR1 vs. 11gR2 Packages

Ben MarckIndustry Trends, Technical TipsLeave a Comment

Many of our customers get hung up on the release cycles, version numbers, and included products of Oracle’s Identity Management offerings. Following is a quick breakdown of the latest versions of Oracle’s Identity Management products included in both 11gR1 and 11gR2 organized as the downloadable software packages. Most of Oracle’s Identity Management products can be licensed as either a part of a suite or individually, however, some can only be licensed individually. The packages have changed significantly between 11gR1 and 11gR2 and some 11gR2 licensing suites include 11gR1 products….confused yet? Don’t worry, we can help. Let’s Talk. Oracle Identity Management … Read More

OIM AD Trusted Recon Job – java.naming.factory.initial Exception

Ben MarckTechnical TipsLeave a Comment

Recently, we configured OIM 11.1.1.5 with MTS (Multiple Trusted Sources) by making AD the authoritative source for the email address attribute. As per requirements, we also added an additional domain attribute to the AD reconciliation process and provisioned additional attributes to AD.   Shortly thereafter our email address updates from AD stop propagating and our AD Trusted Recon job started throwing the following exception…….   [2012-04-19T17:56:23.032-04:00] [oim_server1] [ERROR] [] [OIMCP.ADCS] [tid: OIMQuartzScheduler_Worker-10] [userId: oiminternal] [ecid: 0000JRBfdRo7y0lqwsFg6G1F^4pi000002,0] [APP: oim#11.1.1.3.0] com.thortech.xl.integration.ActiveDirectory.tcADUtilLDAPController : searchResultPageEnum [2012-04-19T17:56:23.032-04:00] [oim_server1] [ERROR] [] [OIMCP.ADCS] [tid: OIMQuartzScheduler_Worker-10] [userId: oiminternal] [ecid: 0000JRBfdRo7y0lqwsFg6G1F^4pi000002,0] [APP: oim#11.1.1.3.0] Need to specify class name in … Read More