Download the Managed Identity Service Survey Results

When I released the results for the Managed Identity Services Survey, I said I would make it available as a PDF that could be downloaded. It took me a little longer than anticipated but I finally got around to it.

I actually turned it into an online presentation using Google Docs, which meant it could be embedded (see below) and also linked to directly. If you follow the direct link, you should be able to download the presentation as a PDF by clicking "Print Slides" and then "Save as PDF" (or you could actually print it).

And the iPod touch goes to

Remember my Managed Identity Services Survey and how the good folks at Identropy offered an iPod touch as an incentive to participate? It's taken some time thanks to various emails falling into spam folders and/or not getting through email filters but we finally got it sorted.

The recipient of the iPod touch has been announced over on Ash Motiwala's blog. Congratulations Niall!

Special thanks to Ash and Identropy for the prize. Also, thanks to Matt Flynn for helping us out with the logistics around selecting the winner and ensuring it was completely random (if anyone feels like they need to know the boring details around how it was done, contact me using the form on my blog).

Referencing the Managed Identity Services Survey Results

I've had a few requests from various people asking if they can refer to or quote the Managed Identity Services Survey results. My answer each time has been that I have no issues as long as they don't re-sell the results in any way and to make sure they attribute it to my blog.

So, I've taken the liberty of licensing the survey results under Creative Commons as follows:


The Managed Identity Services Survey and Results by Ian Yip is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

In fact, if you cast your eyes over the right column of the blog, you'll notice I've now licensed everything I write/produce on here the same way. Of course if you're planning to refer to the survey results, it would be great if you could tell me just so I know. You don't have to, but it would be nice :-)

Results for Question 14 of the Survey

If you were paying attention when I released the Managed Identity Services Survey results yesterday, you may have noticed it was missing the results for question 14.

As I explained at the time, the graphs didn't reflect the actual numbers so I had to take a closer look before publishing them. They've now been corrected and the results updated accordingly.

Now comes the task of working with Identropy and our unbiased third party helper to determine the recipient of the iPod touch. Stay tuned.

Managed Identity Services Survey Results

The Managed Identity Services Survey was closed 2 weeks ago. I said at the time that I had to consolidate the data to produce useful results. It took a little longer than I expected but it's done. A very special thanks to my better half for helping to produce the charts below. And if you thought question 14 was a pain to answer, it was nothing compared to trying to graph the results for it. (Update: I had to remove the results for Q14 because the numbers were a little wonky. Something was lost in the translation between the raw results and the visuals. I'll update accordingly when they are corrected. Update 2: Q14 results have been corrected and uploaded. They are now available at the end of this post.)

If you don't see your exact answer (for those that bothered to type into the "Other" box for your response) in the results it was because I consolidated it into one of the other answers.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure out how to make this blogging engine display images at full size within the page. It seems to only allow for a much smaller version to be inserted and forces the reader to click on each for a full size image. In light of this, I'll take some time within the next week to produce a PDF version of these results for those that prefer an actual document and don't feel like clicking through each image. I'm also planning to write a whitepaper that aims to summarise the survey and give some additional insight based on viewing the data in different ways (this one will take some time so please be patient).

If you are up to it, please feel free to write up your own analysis of the results. Be sure to let me know and I'll link to it.

Without further ado, I present *drum roll*...the results along with the corresponding questions (as I said, you'll need to click on each image for a larger version...unless you have a magnifying glass).

Question 1 - Which country do you live in? (optional)

Comment: Although this was optional, almost everyone completed this question.



Question 2 - Which organisation do you work for? (optional)

Comment: I won't publish the breakdown of all responses here because only roughly half the respondents filled this in. Here is a sample of some of the companies represented: IBM, Oracle, Accenture, Duke University Medical Center, Lehman Brothers, Apple, Tiffany & Co.

Question 3 - How large is your organisation?



Question 4 - Which industry vertical does your organisation best fit into?



Question 5 - What is your role within the organisation?



Question 6 - What do you consider to be your primary area of focus?



Question 7 - Where do you fit into the decision making process?



Question 8 - What services (if any) do you currently outsource?



Question 9 - What stage of your identity management journey are you currently at?



Question 10 - Which of the following solutions have you implemented and how?














Question 11 - If you decided to outsource your identity management infrastructure, which model would your preferred approach be?



Question 12 - What do you see as the biggest barrier to outsourcing identity management?

Comment: I included some of the raw answers left by various people here because while I could probably have consolidated them, I felt it was useful to leave them alone for all to see.



Question 13 - What do you see as the biggest benefit that outsourcing identity management provides?

Comment: I included some of the raw answers left by various people here because while I could probably have consolidated them, I felt it was useful to leave them alone for all to see.



Question 14 - When do you believe your organisation (or other organisations) will be ready for each of the following outsourcing options?

Managed Identity Services Survey now closed

The survey's officially closed. Thank you very much to the 70 respondents who took the time and effort. I know question 14 was a real pain :-)

I'll be releasing the basic results soon (and follow up with a more detailed analysis later), but here's a teaser:

• Over half work for organisations with more than 1000 employees.
• Many work for organisations in the technology industry, but financial services and healthcare are well represented too.
• In the decision making process within their organisations, roughly 43% consider themselves decision makers while around 36% consider themselves influencers.
• The most commonly outsourced service is...you guessed it, software development.
• When asked what stage of their Identity Management journey their organisation was at, one response gets rather specific: "Sunsetting an old provisioning tool (CA's) (in production 3 years) and replacing it with a new one (Sun's)".
• Lots of people have implemented Active Directory and LDAP (not surprising), but Federated Identity Management is the least prevalent solution (I'm actually not surprised, but some might be given all the vendor hype around Federation).
  

The full results are very interesting. I'll post them up as soon as I consolidate the data (e.g. USA, US, United States, United States of America all mean the same thing so I have to standardise the result set accordingly).

I'll also organise the logistics of determining the lucky iPod touch recipient with Identropy. The process will be as transparent as we can possibly make it.

We've hit the target of 50 responses

I extended the deadline for the Managed Identity Services Survey yesterday, but the number of responses crept over 50 overnight. This is great news of course because it means that I'll be able to release the results and a lucky person will be the recipient of the iPod touch.

As a result, the survey will definitely be closed at 11:59pm GMT (London time) on Sunday 12th October 2008 and won't be extended.

Survey deadline extended

We've just gone past the deadline for the Managed Identity Services Survey. Unfortunately, the number of survey responses hasn't quite hit 50, although it was very, very, very close.

If you read the full set of rules, you would have noticed the following:

"The survey will be closed at 11:59pm GMT (London time) on Sunday 5th October 2008 unless the target number of 50 responses has not been reached."

As the rule states, I have to extend the deadline. The new deadline is now 11:59pm GMT (London time) on Sunday 12th October 2008, which is an extension of a week (the survey rules have been updated to reflect this extension with a link back to this blog post for details). The number of responses should hit 50 well before the week is up, but there's no harm in collecting more.

Here's the direct link to the survey. Once again, thanks to all participants to date. I know it takes some effort to fill in, but we're in for some very interesting results (not to mention the iPod touch).

Survey closes in a few days

Here's a friendly reminder that the Managed Identity Services Survey closes on Sunday night (October 5th). That's in 2 days so if you've been meaning to get around to it, now's the time if you want a chance at the iPod touch courtesy of Identropy.

I know some find it difficult, which might be why we haven't hit the 50 response mark yet. We're over 50% of the way there though so let's make an effort to get to the target. Feel free to forward it on to other informed individuals. Remember, unless there's 50+ responses I'm not publishing the results. It also means no one gets the iPod touch :-(

By the way, if all the "bail-outs" actually bothered to complete what they started we'd be well and truly past the finish line with time to spare.

I'm not a baseball fan, but I can't think of another corny cliche at the moment: "Bottom of the 9th and we need a home run. Batter up!"

Is the Managed Identity Services Survey too difficult?

I relaunched the Managed Identity Services Survey a week ago with an added incentive to participate courtesy of Identropy. There's been a decent number of responses to date, although we have yet to hit the target of 50 responses (remember, the rules stipulate that unless I get 50+ responses, the results will not be published - which also means Identropy don't have to hand over the brand new iPod touch to a lucky survey participant).

At this point, I thought it may be of interest to provide an update of sorts in the interest of openness and transparency...

While I didn't set out to create a particularly difficult survey, it seems to have turned out to be less than trivial. I've re-read the survey questions over and over again to determine exactly how difficult they are and this is what I've concluded: the questions aren't that difficult but do require some thought...and that's a good thing.

In going through the responses so far, I've been analysing the "bail-out" responses with particular interest. I'm referring to the half-filled surveys where the participant got to a certain point and decided not to continue. Here's what I've found: most people "bail-out" at either question 9 or question 10. Question 9 is the first Identity Management related question. Answering this requires that you know something about what your organisation is doing in this area. Question 10 is one of two questions within the survey that require some level of effort because it's a matrix of options that need to be selected.

My guess is that people who are in it only for the iPod touch but know nothing about Identity Management are typically the ones that stop on questions 9 and 10. Some are honest in that they get to question 9, realise they know nothing about the subject area and just bow out gracefully. The ones that are unfazed simply click a random option to "answer" question 9 and continue. They then hit question 10 and stop because it's just too hard for them. I guess you can call questions 9 and 10 the "filter" questions.

Question 14 is the other question formatted as a matrix. This happens to be the last question in the survey before the participant is allowed to provide their details for the giveaway. Your reward for answering it is the chance to enter the giveaway (should you choose to provide your details and agree to the terms and conditions).

Sure, there are persistent types who will complete the whole survey without knowing a single thing about Identity Management. But "frivolous", completed surveys have been rare so far (there's 1 or 2 at this stage). I'm a little disappointed that the person claiming to be from "Horse and Hound" magazine didn't keep going though. I wonder if it was Hugh Grant? If you're reading this with a puzzled look, you haven't seen Notting Hill so ignore what I just said.

If you have another reason for not completing the survey, please let me know via the comments or by sending me a message (you can use the "Email Me" form on my blog).

Now we just need to get to 50. There's an iPod touch at stake and just over a week left before the survey closes. Most importantly, we want to see the results so what are you waiting for?

Note: I should point out that I didn't place questions 9, 10 and 14 in their respective positions to act as filters. I just wanted to know the answers and thought they belonged in those positions. The fact they turned out to be good filters is a happy coincidence.

Managed Identity Services Survey relaunch - iPod touch Giveaway

I launched the Managed Identity Services Survey just over a day ago. Once again, thanks to those of you that have completed it thus far.

Upon the release of the survey, Ash Motiwala got in touch and asked if his company (Identropy) could help encourage people to participate in the survey. He suggested a "giveaway" where Identropy would provide the prize. We both agreed that we didn't want this to turn into a sales or marketing exercise and that I would maintain full control. Identropy's interest in the survey is in line with mine - to better understand the state of the market with regards to Managed Identity Services. Remember, the plan is to make the results freely available here.

Without further ado, I'm happy to launch (again) version 1.2 of the Managed Identity Services Survey in conjunction with the "iPod touch Giveaway" (courtesy of Identropy).

For those that don't want to read the fine print, here's an overview of the giveaway:

• Participation in the giveaway is optional. You can complete the survey and simply leave the contact details empty.
  
• I am ineligible for participation in the giveaway, as are Identropy employees.
• The survey results will only be released when there are 50 or more responses.
• The survey will be closed at 11:59pm GMT (London time) on Sunday 5th October 2008 unless the target number of 50 responses has not been reached. (Update, 6th October 2008: The deadline has been extended to 11:59pm GMT (London time) on Sunday 12th October 2008 - full details here).
• The giveaway draw cannot be conducted until the results of the survey have been published.
• The draw will be made by an impartial 3rd party.
  
• The core questions of the survey remain the same. Nothing has been changed with each iteration of the survey except for modifications made to support the logistics of the giveaway.
  

The obvious question here is: "what about those of us who filled in the previous versions of the survey?!" (I didn't give anyone the option to leave their details in the previous versions of the survey)

Answer: If you don't want to participate in the giveaway, you don't need to do a thing. I'm planning to keep all versions of the survey running and will aggregate the results (i.e. your responses still count). If you do want to participate in the giveaway, you can do one of 2 things:

1. Tell me the approximate time you submitted the survey and your answer to any 2 questions. If you really can't remember, just contact me and we'll see if we can work something out.
2. Complete the new survey and don't forget to provide your details. It would be nice if you could tell me approximately what time you submitted your first set of responses so I can make a note not to include them in the results.
   

You can contact me via the "Email Me" contact form on the far right column of my blog.

If you have any questions, please let me know (you can do this via the comments too).

Note: You might have noticed I've changed the survey engine. The old one (Pollograph) was just too buggy and unpredictable. Hopefully this new one works better (please let me know if you run into any issues).

Here's a link to the survey once again for good measure. What are you waiting for? An iPod touch awaits (potentially)!

For those that like fine print, here are the full details of the giveaway:

iPod touch Giveaway Details

A "giveaway" will be conducted when the results of this survey are released. Identropy have kindly offered a brand new Apple iPod touch as the prize.

Disclosure: Identropy provides consulting, integration and managed services for Identity Management technologies. For more information, please go to http://identropy.com.

If you would like to be enrolled into the "iPod touch Giveaway", please provide your details in the relevant section of the survey. Note that this is optional and you do not have to enter if you do not wish to.

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Rules

• Each individual is limited to a single entry in the giveaway. Please do not answer the survey more than once as this may skew the results.


• The giveaway is open to participants worldwide (except where your own local laws prohibit you from participating).


• Participants who reside in a state or location that considers participation in research as "consideration" in exchange for chance to win, or requires license, permit or similar legal permission to conduct giveaways are disqualified from the "iPod touch Giveaway".


• Ian Yip is not eligible to receive the prize.


• Employees of Identropy are not eligible to receive the prize.


• The survey results will only be released when 50 or more responses have been captured.


• The survey will be closed at 11:59pm GMT (London time) on Sunday 5th October 2008 unless the target number of 50 responses has not been reached. (Update, 6th October 2008: The deadline has been extended to 11:59pm GMT (London time) on Sunday 12th October 2008 - full details here).


• The draw to determine the recipient of the iPod touch will be conducted upon release of the survey results by an impartial 3rd party (the identity of the individual will be disclosed after the draw has been completed).


• Further announcements regarding this survey will be made at http://blog.ianyip.com.

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Disclaimers

• The questions within this survey have not been modified in any form since the original release on 17th September 2008 (before Identropy's involvement). Additions (e.g. this page and the contact details form) have been made to support the logistics required to conduct the "iPod touch Giveaway".


• Ian Yip is in no way employed by or associated with Identropy. Identropy are not paying Ian for their involvement with this survey nor is he benefitting financially in any way (directly or indirectly).


• Identropy do not have access to survey results (until publication) or contact details (except for those of the iPod touch recipient). Ian Yip is the only person with access.


• Widgix Software (SurveyGizmo), the company providing the survey engine can potentially access the information as it is hosted on their system. It is highly unlikely they will access the survey results or related details, but this possibility cannot be completely discounted as neither Identropy nor Ian Yip are associated with Widgix Software in any way.


• Any personal details captured as a result of this survey will NOT be retained beyond the publication of the survey results and subsequent giveaway.

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Notes

• This survey is version 1.2 of Ian Yip's Managed Identity Services Survey. Versions 1.0 and 1.1 are still available on the original survey hosting site (http://pollograph.com). The decision was made to move this version of the survey to a different platform due to the numerous minor bugs found within the pollograph.com survey platform.


• There is a limit of 250 responses for this survey. This is not a limitation set by the author. It is a software limitation due to the fact this survey is hosted on a free account.

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Managed Identity Services Survey

The notion of Managed Identity Services and Outsourcing has been popping up all over the place for me lately.

I've written about it recently (here and here). Corbin Links added his thoughts in response to my post. Ash Motiwala dished out some love to Symplified. Jeff Bohren responded to Ash's post.

I've also been discussing the positives and negatives offline with various people around the traps and realised that there are many differing opinions depending on people's backgrounds, experiences and who they work for. I've already said it's a hard sell. But I'm also curious...

When will the market be ready? Will it ever be ready? What are organisations actually worried about? What are the barriers to adoption? Is it all perception? Are there other concerns we don't know about?

It would be great if I could get everyone who had an opinion to write blog posts about this or even leave a comment. But that takes a non-trivial amount of time and thought. So I've decided to make an attempt at the next best thing: a survey. Less thinking, less writing. Just answer the multiple choice questions.

The problem with a survey is that it's useless unless there's a decent number of responses. With that in mind, I've decided to only publish the results of the survey if I can get a useful sample set to present (I'm willing to take suggestions regarding what constitutes a useful sample set). That should be enough incentive (for those interested in the results) to complete the survey and encourage others to participate as well. I'm not trying to target a particular demographic. The more the merrier.

So what are you waiting for? Take the survey now! Update (19 Sept): New version of the survey is here. Full details here.

Note: This is a first draft survey. It could very well suck, in which case you're more than welcome to tell me and suggest improvements. Perhaps I could post a version 2.0 survey up in due course.

UPDATE: This survey engine should be labelled "Alpha", not "Beta". I've just noticed that it changed some minor settings (or maybe it just didn't save my settings properly) and I can't fix them because once a survey's been published it can't be modified. The most obvious/annoying one being that I set the "what country do you live in" question to be optional, but the thing insists that people fill it in! I also wish they allowed for "survey cloning" because I've just had to copy all the questions and response options manually from the old one to create the new one! Anyway, I've updated my original link to point at the new version of the survey (labelled version 1.1), but here it is again. (Update 19 Sept: New version of the survey is here. Full details here.) I've left the old one running in case people saved the link for use later. Thanks to those of you that have already taken the survey. Your responses have been saved (so you don't need to take the new survey - the questions are exactly the same) and I'll include them if/when I publish the results. If anyone finds issues with the new version of the survey, please let me know.

UPDATE 19 Sept:

You can now participate in the "iPod touch Giveaway" by completing the new version of the survey. Please read the full details here before proceeding.

Top 10 Tech Leaders

Sage Research and NetworkWorld did a survey earlier this month of the top 10 technology companies. They survey rated the companies against the following categories:

• Executive Management Leadership
• Leadership Qualities
• Customer Service
• Key Technology Industry Leader
• Product Excellence
• Strategic Supplier
• Sales Experience
• Technology Vision Leadership
• Whether respondents were likely to buy from the vendors within a year
  

The top 10 companies in each of these categories can be found here as a slide show.

Survey participants were gathered from a combination of NetworkWorld subscribers who are also decision makers within their respective organisations and Sage Research's Technology Panel members. The top 10 overall companies pretty much rated in the top 10 for each category. Overall standouts were:

• IBM
• Cisco
• Apple

From a vendor's perspective however, I'd be MOST interested in the "whether respondents were likely to buy from the vendors within a year" category. Sure, it's nice that people think a vendor is great at customer service, has good technology and has strong executive leadership - but are they going to buy anything anytime soon?! With this in mind the following things jumped out at me:

• Cisco rated highly everywhere and rated highly on the "likely to buy" list.
  
• Microsoft doesn't rate in the top 5 anywhere except for being 2nd on the "strategic supplier" list and 1st in the "likely to buy" list!
• IBM rates top 3 almost everywhere EXCEPT on the "likely to buy" list. It is 5th here.
  
• Apple rates similarly to IBM and Cisco, BUT is NOT in the top 10 on the "likely to buy" list.
  

So am I to conclude the following:

• Cisco is doing just fine.
  
• Microsoft have ruled our desktops for so long that our laziness and aversion to change have made us accept that even though we don't like them, at least we know that to shut down we have to click the "start" button and if anything stops working, just reboot.
• Are IBM too expensive for our tastes? Otherwise I don't know why it's not in the top 3 of the "likely to buy" list.
• Apple have GREAT marketing and design departments and their stuff is VERY cool...but would you use a frigging MacOS? How are we supposed to play games?!
  

Read the full article for yourself here.