Onboarding Applications: the Everest of IAM Implementation

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All an organization’s applications must be onboarded into IAM systems, be it for Access Management, Identity Administration, Access Certification, Password Management, SSO, or other technologies. Most business use anywhere from 75-150 apps and sometimes much more. Ripping and replacing or adding apps to the IT environment at regular intervals is also common.

Onboarding applications for various IAM functions is fraught with challenges, taking up more than 60% of the total implementation time.

Traditional Methods are Cumbersome

Application onboarding in IAM can be broken into two parts:

  • Coordinating with application owners to gather data.
  • Doing the engineering work to integrate the application with the IAM system.

When it comes to coordinating with application owners to gather data, most of the time is taken in collecting information. The lack of understanding of what is needed from the application owners and how to get what is needed leads the IAM team and the application team in an endless circle. The entire process is a source of confusion and frustration and is a waste of time. It is estimated that 70% of the time taken in onboarding an application into an IAM system goes into coordinating with application owners to gather data.

Experts agree that application onboarding is the single greatest cause of low ROI from IAM implementations.

Here’s the information gathering process:

  • Traditionally, the entire process is manual. It is performed in a haphazard manner through emails and phone calls between the IAM implementation team and application owners. Since it is a manual process, it is limited by the restrictions of the staff on the team, lack of understanding of technical requirements, location differences between the onboarding team and application owners, changes in roles, and other priorities that are more critical to the application teams.
  • This process needs to be repeated for each application that needs to be onboarded, and often even for the same application. The IAM team may often discover that the provided information is outdated or incomplete. When they go back to the application owner, the employee has quit his job or changed roles, or the application owner has been reassigned, and part of the work may need to be repeated.

This entire process is error prone and painful. It typically takes a long time for applications to be onboarded into a business’ IAM environment. This means poor ROI and slowdowns or halts in the work process. Employees need their apps to function effectively in their roles. The traditional method of onboarding applications into IAM systems is simply not efficient. Something new must replace it.

Introducing: iART from Ilantus

Ilantus has built the first ever solution to solve these challenges. We present to you the world’s first and almost entirely automated technology/vendor agnostic application onboarding tool for IAM: iART (Ilantus Application Onboarding Requirements Tool).

The tool helps in streamlining the entire process of gathering information. It cuts onboarding time to 1/3rd of a manual process.

The tool works by first creating an application information gathering campaign. Detailed application gathering templates are readily available. It then communicates the requirements to the manager of the application onboarding project. Once the information is gathered, the tool can validate it with its own inbuilt intelligence. Once the information is validated, and if the team feels it is incomplete, they can add comments within the tool.

Who is iART for?

iART can be used by anyone! It is simple and intuitive. If your organization wishes to onboard applications itself, you can utilize this tool to streamline coordination efforts. If you are an MSP, you can use our tool to get your job done faster and more effectively.

Licensing Model

iART is a subscription-based tool. You can opt for subscriptions that run for 3 months or up to 2 years. It is consumption based – you get a set number of applications that you can use the tool to onboard. MSPs pay more but get more applications that they are enabled to onboard.

Conclusion

iART is a revolutionary tool from Ilantus. It significantly enables and improves coordination efforts for gathering application information during the process of onboarding applications into an IAM system. Traditional manual information gathering processes are error prone and cumbersome. iART can reduce the time taken for the information gathering process by 70%.

iART can benefit both organizations wishing to onboard applications themselves, as well as by managed service providers.

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