The Answer is...On-Premise Managed Identity Services

Ian has posted his findings from his Managed Identity Services survey. My primary interest around the survey was to see if data could be collated that could identify characteristics of a managed services solution around IdM that would make customers "comfortable". (In the past, I've posted on the "comfort vs. security" notion). Anyhow, some tasty nuggets are below. Go to the real survey findings for more.

• 67% of respondents have already completed a provisioning implementation (3% as SaaS, 10% have done it in some type of managed service offering, 37% have host and manage it themselves)
• When asked what model they would prefer, 19% wanted SaaS, a whopping 36% wanted an on-premise managed service, 19% wanted an hosted managed service model (that's a total of 55% who are looking for a managed service offering!), while only 13% want to handle it all themselves.
• When asked about what was the barrier preventing them from outsourcing IdM, 22% identified security risks around data being held outside of their infrastructure, 20% said risks regarding external people access their environment, 14% said cost, 11% said loss of control.

So, it seems that although most respondents managed it themselves, over half wanted a managed service model. The risk around data being held outside of their infrastructure could be alleviated by an on-premise model, although I don't think that the significant 20% who didn't want outsiders accessing their environment will be appeased by any solution.