October 14, 2004

By Johna Till Johnson, president & chief research officer, Nemertes Research

The recent acquisition of Netegrity (Nasdaq:NETE) by Computer Associates (NYW: CA) for $430 million in cash highlights the growing importance of identity management (IM). As companies increasingly seek to automate business-to-business transactions and externalize their infrastructure and processes, identity management becomes key. In a recent Nemertes Research benchmark on externalization, 100% of IT executive participants reported externalizing at least some non-core business functions (finance, accounts payable/receivable, HR, etc), and 89% reported externalizing at least some core business functions. All participants indicated that effective identity management is one of the top requirements enabling externalization.

Broadly speaking, identity management describes the functions involved in managing user accounts across multiple systems. It includes functions ranging from user account repositories and user roles to password synchronization, account provisioning and management, federation management, and authentication, authorization, and auditing. The CA-Netegrity deal effectively combines two solution suites (CA’s eTrust Identity and Access Management and Netegrity’s IdentityMinder) that feature overlapping functions. We believe CA will attempt to rationalize the two solution suites, which will affect both CA and Netegrity customers.

The complete Impact Analysis is available to Nemertes clients. For more information, please contact Chris Zimmerman at christine@nemertes.com