Business factors and integration of access management into adjacent product areas drove the changes to the extranet asset management (EAM) market in the second half of 2001 (see Figure 1). Gartner expects this trend to continue in 2002, while the battle for authentication standards between Microsoft and the Liberty Alliance will decide the fate of XML standards for access management.

Figure 1

EAM 2H01 Magic Quadrant

Source: Gartner Research

Market Trends

The slowdown in extranet rollouts that we predicted in the 1H01 EAM Magic Quadrant (see "1H01 Extranet Access Management Magic Quadrant," M-13-6853) was the most important factor that affected the EAM market. Securant Technologies was acquired by RSA Security, Symantec exited the market by selling Webthority to PassGo Technologies, and constrained enterprise budgets caused further downward pressure on user-based pricing. The terrorist attacks on September 11 shifted enterprises' attention to defensive security measures, such as firewalls, intrusion detection and antivirus solutions. "Let the good guys in" expenditures had to wait in line behind higher-priority, "keep the bad guys out" initiatives and disaster recovery procurements.

A side effect of the terrorist attacks has been a decrease in business travel in addition to more-distributed operations. This will drive enterprise demand for online collaboration systems and increase emphasis on employee-oriented access management projects. We expect the United States' "homeland security" focus, as well as a continued movement toward e-government at the U.S. state level and at the national level in Europe and the Asia/Pacific region, will cause the government vertical and those channels that sell to governments to be a major factor in 2002. As the telecommunications industry emerges from a landscape littered with bankruptcies, telecoms will move to consolidated access management solutions as part of cost-saving measures. These two vertical sectors have notoriously long sales cycles — capturing the major systems integration players in these channels is critical to EAM vendor success.

In 2000, Gartner predicted that access management would merge with content and portal management solutions by year-end 2002. Netegrity's acquisition of DataChannel, along with IBM's, Sun Microsystems' iPlanet's and Novell's integration of their offerings, has verified this forecast. The increased focus on employee-oriented access management and cost savings will drive the integration of provisioning capabilities into access management solutions as well. The key elements of provisioning solutions are the workflow capabilities and application connectors that help reduce the costs of administering large user populations across multiple applications. By year-end 2003, there will be no pure-play EAM vendors left in the market (0.8 probability). However, portals are a moving target (see "Next for Portal Products: The Portal Application Server," SPA-14-5721). As portal application servers emerge in the 2004 time frame, the major platform vendors will be in position to dominate the market. No more than two EAM vendors will survive that transition (0.7 probability).

Our projection for the effect of XML standards such as the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) was too optimistic. The SAML specification was still in draft form in the first quarter of 2002; its progression is increasingly slow. Although most EAM vendors build new product versions using XML and SAML concepts, we don't seem to be any closer to SAML supporting interoperability across vendor products than we were in mid 2001. Unless the Liberty Alliance supports SAML as part of its architecture for providing a competing approach to Microsoft's federated Passport architecture, SAML will not be a factor in enabling interoperability by access management systems (0.8 probability). Microsoft's global XML architecture did not define access management XML constructs, but it could be driven toward SAML if the Liberty Alliance applies market pressure by painting Passport as a proprietary approach, even though it is based on Kerberos.

Leaders

Netegrity enhanced its leadership position in the EAM market with the acquisition of DataChannel, and with increasing strength in systems integrators and consultancies that recommend its products. The loss of iPlanet as a channel partner and VeriSign's deal with IBM has reduced some of Netegrity's channel reach. However, with regard to the VeriSign/IBM deal, we don't expect the market for managed entitlement services will be meaningful before the second half of 2003. Netegrity's major challenges will be the integration of its first acquisition, as well as the loss of portal product neutrality that will make pure-play portal vendors view Netegrity as a competitor rather than a partner.

IBM made great strides in integrating Policy Director with WebSphere and other IBM products, including bundling agreements that greatly extend Policy Director's reach. IBM has increased its focus on the EAM space, and it has become more aggressive in marketing, pricing and business alliances. The company's major challenge is its difficulty in capturing systems integrator partners, which see IBM Global Services as a competitor. IBM also must avoid its tendency to reorganize security business units just when they begin to achieve optimal performance.

Challengers

Novell has renamed its product line SecureAccess and has all the pieces to be a major contender in the EAM market. However, it must resolve its "split personalities" to become effective. The old Novell still focuses on markets where NetWare and eDirectory are strong, and it tries to add capabilities in increments to Novell's traditional base. The new Novell — i.e., post-Cambridge Technology Partners acquisition — seems to focus on growing a services business vs. creating products that integrate well with other vendors' portals, application servers or other software. If Novell can't submerge these two personalities and focus on channel and integration partners, then it will be limited to addressing a shrinking market segment.

Visionaries

RSA Security acquired Securant Technologies in 2001 and gained strong technology, but lost most of Securant's sales force. This represents a major challenge for RSA, whose sales and product development approach has focused on selling to public key infrastructure (PKI) and access token decision makers rather than e-business project champions. The increased focus on collaboration and employee portal access bodes well for RSA, and it is in a good position to integrate its Ace Server and Clear Trust product lines in the future. Adding workflow capabilities will be key for the company to compete in the evolving EAM market. The distractions of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, in addition to the integration of recent acquisitions, may hurt RSA's ability to execute.

Entrust made major strides in stabilizing its acquired EAM product, GetAccess, and in trimming its organization. Entrust maintained its market position in 2001, but it did not show major progress in channel strength, "mind share" or technology leadership.

Oblix seemed to benefit the most from Netegrity's acquisition of DataChannel by capturing relationships with other portal vendors and increasing its alliances with major systems integrators. The company appears to have the lead in meaningful sales pull from Siebel Systems sales force automation implementations, which is a key market factor.

Open Network Technologies was somewhat successful in 2001 in growing beyond its strength in the health insurance niche market; however, competitors began to make gains in that same vertical industry. Open Network and Oblix are in strong positions to benefit from the increased use of Active Directory in extranet applications. Success in the EAM market will mean the ability to address and capture smaller integrators with solutions that offer lower price points.

Niche Players

Entegrity's distributed architecture is very strong in the Java application server market. However, as the bellwether of that market, BEA System's slowdown has limited Entegrity's growth. Its solution appears to be a solid fit for telecommunications and other markets that focus on large-scale, high-reliability distributed applications.

As the PKI market continued to shrivel in 2001, Baltimore Technologies increased its focus on the EAM market with its SelectAccess product. However, Baltimore's financial difficulties have greatly decreased its visibility and support in the U.S. market.

We have added Wipro to the Magic Quadrant because its WebSecure product was adopted by several large enterprises, and it has the potential to be a solid product.

Vasco remains a niche player where its Digipass token technology is in use.

Not on the Map

We have removed or omitted the following vendors from the Magic Quadrant:

• Hewlett-Packard shows no intent to advance its DomainGuard product.
• Symantec sold its Webthority product to PassGo, and we have yet to see deployed systems.
• Blockade Systems has changed its product strategy to partner with EAM vendors rather than offer a competing product.
• iPlanet has stopped reselling Netegrity's product and created its own Directory Server Access Management Edition. However, even though the product version numbering started at v.5.0, the product represents first-generation technology; we haven't seen enough production use to consider it a contender.
• Computer Associates has presented plans to compete in the EAM market; it has yet to affect the market.

The Future of the Market

Gartner believes EAM initiatives will experience moderate growth if the economy continues to drift, or if new terrorist attacks reinforce the need to emphasize defensive security expenditures. However, it appears that many Type B (i.e., moderate, "fast follower") enterprises are planning to deploy access management solutions inside and outside the firewall. A reviving economy would support strong growth in this market. Channel relationships and integration with portal, content management and provisioning solutions will be increasingly important in this phase of the market. The rise of Web services applications in 2003, in addition to the coexistence of the Passport and Liberty Alliance approaches in that time frame, will place a premium on interoperability and performance.

Bottom Line: Enterprises should continue to emphasize application integration and performance when comparing competing EAM products. Vendors adding features that make it easier to deploy and operate EAM systems will lead the next phase of the market.

This research is part of a set of related research pieces. See AV-15-4468 for an overview.

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