SAP TechEd: Preview

I'm here in Las Vegas, Nevada for SAP TechEd 2012 and I could not be happier. It's looking like quite the busy week of IDM related training.  Attendees are arriving and I've already seen a few people I know from SAP, past projects and the greater IDM Community.  From what I've already heard we're in for a week of exciting learning, future product direction and late breaking functionality in the product. In addition to working with IDM this week, I'll be attending several sessions on the SSO solution that SAP purchased from SECUDE last year.  Now that a year has gone by, the product should be fully integrated into the SAP universe and I'm very interested in learning more about it. I was strangely surprised to see very few, if any, SAP GRC solutions in the session listings.  Hopefully, I'll be able to find out what's going on with that. On the other hand, there will be several Virtual Directory Server related sessions which should be quite informative about connecting to various systems and web services.

I'm sure that we will hear the latest news about SAP IDM 7.2.  Service Pack 6 is due shortly and I'm looking forward to getting a few rumors confirmed.  Probably the one to be confirmed first will be around DB2 support. This will be very good for IBM shops where DB2 is used to the exclusion of the other supported databases in IDM, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle.  This adds greater flexibility to my thoughts in choosing an IDM solution, as one can now expand the database criteria and will answer the pleas for support from many SAP customers that want to get involved with IDM. There are also some rumors about new and improved tools along the lines of the Configration Analyzer.


Also rumored are some MMC improvements, although I have not yet gotten even a rumor of when a redesigned administrative console will be available, although I am assured that it is indeed on the list. I'm hoping to get some information on this during the SAP  NetWeaver ID Management - Latest Functionality and Demo session scheduled for tomorrow.  Hopefully, I'll have some exciting news for the SAP IDM community.

I'm looking forward to seeing / learning / connecting and reconnecting during the week.  Odds are you'll find me at the various IDM and SSO sessions this week if you're here.  Please feel free to introduce yourselves.  I'd like to try and organize some sort of IDM meet up this week, maybe a drink or two one night.  I've received some interest in this.  If you have not contacted me yet, please leave a comment or email me privately.