Unifying communication roundtable: Identity management

The cornerstone of a successful UC implementation is having up-to-date user information. DiData’s Brian Walshe said integrators often took for granted that identity information within a customer’s organisation was accurate and managed properly.

“Identity has mostly resided in the directory components, but telephony being brought into the network has created that second identity, and that’s where they need to sync,” NET’s Maurizio Fragasso said.

Another problem was there were many customers already using things like Active Directory, but that hadn’t filled in all the appropriate fields of information required for a comprehensive UC solution, VInet’s Michael Pryztula said.

“You have to educate those customers to put that information in. But it also can raise issues around security and privacy – do I want my mobile phone in there for others to see? But some of the functions of UC only give you true value when there’s a richness of information in there,” he said.

“It also changes business workflow – in the past, HR would employ someone and someone would create an AD account, then another person would assign a telephony extension. But that process needs to change when you go towards UC.”

Customers and integrators also had to bear in mind hidden identity management costs, Walshe said.

“If you’re having to manage everything separately, you invariably end up with a user leaving an organisation whose phone is cut off but who still has a live email account. From a security point of view, you have to clean those up and have one source of truth. But if you haven’t managed things together before, there is a cost there,” he said.

For Gen-i’s Craig Pringle, helping customers understand identity and implementing a single system was a major opportunity for integrators.

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