On the Radar: ForgeRock

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1 Identity management for B2C and the Internet of Things Publication Date: 03 Dec 2015 Product code: IT Rik Turner

2 Summary Catalyst ForgeRock develops identity and access management (IAM) technology for large enterprises and government agencies, focusing on the business-to-customer/government-to-citizen scenario, which for brevity s sake will hereafter be referred to as the B2C market. This is different from most of the household names in IAM, which have grown up and established their operations selling into the business-to-employee (B2E) and business-to-business (B2B) markets. That said, some of the players in that space, such as Oracle, are now looking to move across into B2C to meet burgeoning demand from e-commerce and e-government. Key messages ForgeRock provides massively scalable IAM technology for B2C and IoT environments. Its customers are high-end enterprises and public sector entities and it positions its platform as identity relationship management. The four components of its platform are open source software. ForgeRock is adding integration with marketing automation platforms as well as support for the User-Managed Access (UMA) protocol in future releases. Ovum view The future looks bright for tech platforms like ForgeRock s, given the scalability requirements of e- commerce and e-government, as well as the Internet of Things (IoT). Ovum expects to see competitors emerging not so much from traditional IAM vendors as from new players. Recommendations for enterprises Why put ForgeRock Identity Platform on your radar? If you are a large enterprise that seeks to use identity management as an enabler of improved customer experience or needs to introduce IAM as part of an IoT deployment, you should definitely put ForgeRock on the list of providers for consideration, given their platform s scalability and the fact that its open source nature will enable your developments to try before you buy. Highlights The IAM platform that ForgeRock acquired from Oracle was developed by Sun for the telco market and, as such, had massive scalability (i.e. in the millions of users rather than tens of thousands) built in as a design concept. The open source, go-to-market format enables ForgeRock s customers to get underway with the free version of its software, the company providing each major release (i.e. 1.0, 2.0, and so on) to the open source community. Customers must license it, however, as soon as they put it into production, in exchange for which they get all the minor releases, as well as patches and maintenance services. Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. Page 2

3 The platform consists of four products: OpenAM the flagship access management product, supporting federated sign-on, access through an application programming interface (API), and multi-factor authentication OpenIG an identity gateway providing API security, via a reverse proxy, for applications, devices, and things OpenIDM the identity lifecycle management platform, provisioning identities and managing passwords for users, devices, and things OpenDJ the directory services component, developed for massive scale, with support for specific data residency requirements. When Sun was developing the original technology, telco was something of an exceptional market in terms of its requirements from an IAM platform. Now, though, the world has rather caught up, with all kinds of commercial and non-commercial organizations needing to identify and interact with millions of customers and members of the public in general. In this context, IAM becomes an enabler of between customer relationships and customer experience in the e-commerce, e-health, and e-government worlds. Meanwhile, the development of the Internet of Things (IoT), with the potential for tens of billions of unmanned devices to be connected to the web, only compounds the need for massively scalable IAM technology. Background ForgeRock is a privately held, VC-funded startup dating from 2010, with its first product launch taking place in That said, it is a startup with a difference, in that its technology platform was originally developed by Sun Microsystems and acquired from Oracle after the latter bought Sun in Its CEO is Mike Ellis, who previously held executive roles at SAP, Oracle, and Apple, and its CTO is Lasse Andresen, who held leadership positions at Sun and Texas Instruments. Highlighting its customer-facing focus rather than the B2E and B2B technology developed by other IAM vendors, ForgeRock coined the term Identity Relationship Management for its platform. ForgeRock inherited an open source go-to-market strategy for the platform from Sun and, like the erstwhile owner of the technology, it offers it under a Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) rather than the GNU General Public License (GPL). CDDL was developed by Sun to support its open source initiatives and is considered more commercial friendly than GPL. Current position The CDDL model enables developers to play around with ForgeRock source code at will, but requires licensing once it goes into production in their environment. ForgeRock claims to have 400 enterprise customers, including Salesforce.com, Telefonica, and Vodafone, as well as government agencies in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and Norway. It says the majority of customers use all four of its products, which effectively work as modules on a common platform. The main competition for ForgeRock does not come from the traditional IAM players, even though Oracle is certainly looking at the B2C potential for its platform, but from new players like Gigya Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. Page 3

4 (though that vendor currently focuses on social media only) and Ping (though again, that company only really plays in access management). Among the innovations on its roadmap, ForgeRock plans to add support for the UMA protocol within the OAuth standard. This will enable its platform to externalize authorization, such that the consumers and citizens whose identities are held within it will be able to choose what data they wish to share and with which people and applications they wish to share it. Another feature in the pipeline is continuous authorization, which will make it possible to trigger an authentication requirement whenever changes are made to an identity profile. Also coming is integration with marketing automation platforms such as Marketo, ExactTarget, Pardot, and Eloqua (now part of Oracle), that will enable the ForgeRock platform to push data into them for relationship enhancement, lead generation, and so on. Data sheet Key facts Table 1: Data sheet: ForgeRock Product name ForgeRock Identity Platform Product classification Identity and Access Management Version number OpenAM ; OpenIDM - 3.1; OpenIG - 3.1; OpenDJ Release date December Next release: December 2015: OpenAM 13.0; OpenIDM 4.0; OpenIG 4.0; OpenDJ 3.0 Industries covered All (all industries face similar digital transformation and security challenges) Geographies covered All (global) Relevant company sizes Global 2000 and government Licensing options ForgeRock subscription, priced per internal or external users, and/or per device/thing URL Routes to market Direct sales model or via partner network. Open source approach allows for easy download and access to source code for evaluation/poc. Company headquarters San Francisco, California, US Number of employees Source: Ovum Appendix On the Radar On the Radar is a series of research notes about vendors bringing innovative ideas, products, or business models to their markets. Although On the Radar vendors may not be ready for prime time, they bear watching for their potential impact on markets and could be suitable for certain enterprise and public sector IT organizations. Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. Page 4

5 Further reading Driving Scale in the Internet of Things, TE (October 2014) Managing Data in the Internet of Things, IT (October 2014) Security Implications of the Internet of Things, IT (December 2014) On the Radar: SecureRF, IT (December 2014) IoT: Weightless bids to become a heavyweight, TE (October 2013) Cloud-based Internet of Things platforms are fueling enterprise interest, IT (November 2014) Internet of Things interoperability remains a conundrum, IT (November 2014) Author Rik Turner, Senior Analyst, Infrastructure Solutions rik.turner@ovum.com Ovum Consulting We hope that this analysis will help you make informed and imaginative business decisions. If you have further requirements, Ovum s consulting team may be able to help you. For more information about Ovum s consulting capabilities, please contact us directly at consulting@ovum.com. Copyright notice and disclaimer The contents of this product are protected by international copyright laws, database rights and other intellectual property rights. The owner of these rights is Informa Telecoms and Media Limited, our affiliates or other third party licensors. All product and company names and logos contained within or appearing on this product are the trademarks, service marks or trading names of their respective owners, including Informa Telecoms and Media Limited. This product may not be copied, reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Informa Telecoms and Media Limited. Whilst reasonable efforts have been made to ensure that the information and content of this product was correct as at the date of first publication, neither Informa Telecoms and Media Limited nor any person engaged or employed by Informa Telecoms and Media Limited accepts any liability for any errors, omissions or other inaccuracies. Readers should independently verify any facts and figures as no liability can be accepted in this regard readers assume full responsibility and risk accordingly for their use of such information and content. Any views and/or opinions expressed in this product by individual authors or contributors are their personal views and/or opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views and/or opinions of Informa Telecoms and Media Limited. Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. Page 5

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