Widespread Adoption of New Identity Management Technology Expected in Conjunction with Rapid Growth of Digital Business

Bristol – December 18, 2014 – ForgeRock® Inc., the leading open provider of Identity Relationship Management (IRM) solutions, today revealed its 2015 technology predictions. The company expects to see increasing demand for identity platforms that provide massive scalability and flexibility in order to accommodate customer, partner and device identities, in addition to those of employees. Identity is increasingly critical to the digital economy because it both protects consumer privacy and provides enterprises with greater visibility into customer preferences, so they can offer new services and additional opportunities for engagement that drive revenue, customer loyalty and brand equity.

ForgeRock makes these four predictions in 2015:

1. Legacy identity and access management (IAM) software will be replaced by more flexible and scalable identity solutions as organisations adapt to the digital marketplace.
Designed for a simpler time, legacy identity management systems use static rules to define who (or what) you are and what you (or it) can do. Legacy IAM is also limited due to its ability to handle only several thousand users. Organisations have done what they can to extend the usefulness of those systems, but in 2015 we expect to see most reach the limit of this incremental approach and acknowledge that flexible, scalable identity management is both a fundamental requirement in the digital marketplace and an essential part of corporate agility.

We predict mass migration of organisations away from IAM systems to IRM platforms to support the growth of their online user base and to realise benefits from cloud computing, mobile technologies and IoT opportunities. In 2015, organisations will be seeking more flexible and scalable solutions that ameliorate the shortcomings of legacy solutions, offering company-wide common identity models, a single customer profile for each user, repeatable processes, device-agnostic architecture, context awareness for more sophisticated decision-making and internet-scale support for millions of identities.

2. Customer-focused identity management will drive digital innovation and revenue growth, giving adopters a competitive advantage.
Scalability and flexibility are already fundamental requirements for mass adoption of innovative internet-driven products and services. In 2015, we expect to see leading organisations turning to customer-focused identity to further drive differentiation for products and services in an increasingly crowded market. They will leverage identity to transform and personalise users’ experience, so that, for example, a connected car remembers the preferences of each driver, a financial services portal offers customers a convenient overview of all their activities and accounts in one place, and wearables—from fitness trackers to smart shoes—offer a wide range of personalised functionality to support the user’s individual goals.

3. Identity context will markedly improve online security.
More than a billion passwords have been stolen, and even strong passwords can be hacked with relative ease. This is leading consumers and businesses to become increasingly wary of online security issues, which could put a significant damper on the growth of digital products and services. We predict that IRM will help solve this challenge and become an integral part of any robust, multi-layered security model. Real-time contextual clues in addition to credentials will help organisations to better vet whether to give access, and how much. So when a system detects a login attempt with correct credentials, but from an unrecognised IP address or at an atypical time of day, it triggers additional security precautions such as asking security questions or texting verification codes to a user’s cell phone.

4. Businesses will increasingly adopt commercial open-source identity solutions.
As identity functionality becomes an increasingly important part of an organisation’s product or service offerings, companies will want certainty that they are part of the development process. In 2015, leading-edge digital businesses are no longer going to accept the lack of transparency in proprietary identity management software. But at the same time, they are not about to bet the growth of their digital business on open-source code that may not be fully enterprise-hardened. We predict that 2015 will see organisations opting for the hybrid approach of commercial open-source identity systems so they can influence the design of their identity platforms while getting the backing and assurance that proprietary software vendors can offer, including mission-critical performance and quality, software licenses, 24/7 support and legal indemnification.