Services
OnDemand
As markets and technologies mature, the challenges of managing a sophisticated identity infrastructure continue
to grow. OnDemand Services provide flexible, as-needed expert advice and guidance in support of changing
identity management needs and goals, allowing customers to engage services when and how they need them.
- Supplement ongoing deployments with deep technical guidance and expertise
- Respond in real-time to resolve critical situations
- Adapt deployments as business conditions change
- Temporarily backfill expertise when staff turnover happens
- Identity management project managers
- Teams with limited access to consulting services
- Teams deploying or extending completed solutions
- Teams with limited product knowledge
- Teams frustrated by being bounced between vendor support and professional services
- Teams who require expert oversight of an existing project or implementation team
- Provide fast access to deeply skilled identity architects and deployment engineers
- Provide solution advice, application audits and expert services at any point in the product lifecycle, from build to deploy to maintain
- Offer flexible capacity to add deep product knowledge when & how its needed
- Provide an identity guru to backfill a vacancy or provide an expert hand for a day or two
- Allow customers to engage services when and how they need them
- Minimize the delays that plague deployments and put schedules at risk
Expert
Most organizations lack the in-house identity management expertise to solve their most challenging
implementation
and production problems -- and to do so without custom code, which makes maintenance and future upgrades more
expensive and complex.
With decades of experience in the identity management industry, Beacon's Expert Services team can step in and
solve
critical problems at any stage of an implementation, leveraging off-the-shelf product capabilities
that save critical time and money. Beacon's experts also bring years of extensive project management experience,
so
that milestones are set, schedules are adhered to, and you always know where your project stands.
Beacon's Expert Services include:
Provide objective, periodic advice on identity management strategy spanning multiple verticals and customer scenarios
- Once a system is up and running, events happen such as an acquisition or a new set of compliance requirements that dictate changes be made to the identity system. Beacon's architects review the environment and lay out a comprehensive plan to get from the current point to the desired point.
- Sometimes in a production environment, teams realize that production changes are taking too long or that making changes is too complex for the in-house team. Beacon's architects come in and quickly discern whether the environment is configured correctly and what changes need to be made to make it easier to run.
Ensure that concise, efficient, supportable code is being deployed
- Check for adherence to best-practice coding methods
- Identify areas of inefficient or excessive custom-coding and provide recommendations where efforts can be streamlined
- Ensure customization is being avoided, layering is not violated, and that scalability is supported
- Search to find anything that will make upgrading or supporting the product more difficult and expensive, and to replace it with a more concise, easily supported alternative
- Code reviews span workflow, forms, policies, and connectors and are a critical way to keep your deployments healthy
Perform cross-environment comparisons to identify potential differences that increase the risk of a failed implementation. Deliverables include:
- Best-practice recommendations for cross-environment consistency
- Roadmap to more homogenous environments
- Risk estimates for existing differences between environments
- Identification of commonly misconfigured components
Helps teams who are having specific performance problems accelerate the performance of their identity management solution
- Whether it is an inability to meet a Service Level Agreement (SLA) or slow-loading pages within the solution, Beacon's experts use the product's native tools to diagnose the problems, ascertain whether there is a significant configuration or architectural problem, and then provide the recommendations and expertise to implement the fix.
- Performance Tuning focuses on improving system metrics and the performance of functions used most frequently.
Implementation
Implementation Services help companies through every phase of an identity management deployment. From
requirements
gathering to production rollout and every phase in between, Beacon brings years of experience, a proven
methodology,
deep project management expertise, and industry innovation to accelerate identity management
initiatives.
Beacon's Identity Test product, Identity Test, was developed in conjunction with customers to solve real deployment challenges. Identity Test enables faster, less expensive deployments that are also less risky by providing complete and automated testing coverage. This innovative solution is used in all of our deployments.
Beacon's Identity Test product, Identity Test, was developed in conjunction with customers to solve real deployment challenges. Identity Test enables faster, less expensive deployments that are also less risky by providing complete and automated testing coverage. This innovative solution is used in all of our deployments.
In addition, Beacon has an extensive code library available to customers. This code library is based on hundreds
of
prior successful deployments and can be used to expedite the development and implementation of workflows, rules,
forms, connectors and user interfaces, leading to faster, more cost-effective deployments.
These advantages lower the risk of implementation problems, speed implementation results and ultimately save money by getting your identity management project up and running right the first time.
These advantages lower the risk of implementation problems, speed implementation results and ultimately save money by getting your identity management project up and running right the first time.
Organizations are constantly changing. Team members leave and identity expertise walks out the door with them. Acquisitions happen. Vendors "end-of-life" outdated products, eliminating support and maintenance of existing solutions. All of these situations (and others) drive a need to migrate from one product or version to another. This requires significant expertise to be accomplished in a timely, cost effective manner.
Beacon's Migration Services help clients:
- Understand what, when and how to pull business processes out of old systems and into new ones
- Execute all elements of migration, including:
- Workflows, rules, policies, interfaces, configuration data
- Connectors, whether for third-party or custom applications
- Fully test migration to ensure smooth sailing every step of the way. Identity Test
- Develop a long-term identity management plan that stands the test of time
Many companies have more than one identity system, often the result of disparate lines of business, mergers and acquisitions, and the development of specialized, homegrown solutions [link to Fidelity case study here]. In today's rapidly changing technology landscape, many companies choose to run multiple systems to avoid vendor lock-in. However, these systems rarely talk to each other, increasing the risk of security and compliance exposures.
Beacon's Integration Services offer:
- Seamless integration of multiple provisioning systems into a single identity system
- Integration with authoritative sources such as Peoplesoft and ActiveDirectory
- Secure integration of global administrator accounts across multiple identity domains (such as Unix administrators)
- Integration of homegrown solutions with commercial identity systems
- Integrated reporting and auditing to meet compliance requirements
- Reduces the cost of running separate identity systems
- Reduces the risk of a security event by providing visibility into who has access to what across multiple identity systems
- Reduces the risk of vendor lock in by adding critical capabilities to homegrown systems and integrating across commercial systems
Companies need to upgrade to newer versions of identity management products both to ensure supportability and to take advantage of new features. The upgrade process is a challenging problem that requires deep technical expertise to accomplish in a timely, affordable manner.
Beacon's Upgrade Service helps clients execute all elements of an upgrade, including:
- Code migration across workflows
- Connectors
- Rules and policies
- Interfaces
Training
This means they need experts to train them. Unlike other organizations whose trainers have little real-world experience, Beacon's consultants have years of hands-on experience as identity management architects and developers, including having written the advanced training courses for some of the industry's leading identity management vendors.
Beacon's highly customizable training services are designed to help your team shorten the learning curve, minimize costs and reduce risks associated with identity management projects.
- Base concepts
- Advanced concepts
- Implementation training
- Classes tailored to customer-specific needs focused on the elements most relevant to the deployment: debugging, post implementation support