TechEd 2012 Wrapup

Quicker than I thought possible, another TechEd has come and gone. It's been a fantastic TechEd this year.

From the SAP Identity Management perspective we saw some exciting new things this year:

• NW IDM Service Pack 6 is scheduled to be released in the next couple of weeks with some nice new features.
• Longer term enhancements will see the end of the dreaded MMC console! I don't think we'll see this in the next couple of enhancements, but I think we'll see it by the end of 2013!
• Virtual Directory received a renewed focus with sessions not only on standard SAP use cases but also in dealing with Identity Services.
• SAP SSO got some nice attention as well.  I'd expect that next year we'll have some hands-on sessions as well.

One thing that I did notice this year was a near complete lack of attention to GRC.  This has me wondering many things.  I don't think that GRC is going away, as the compliance space is very hot right now with all the big companies (IBM, EMC, Oracle, CA, etc.) involved and some other small players (SailPoint, Aveksa) are growing at a rapid pace.

I've not been able to get any confirmation from anyone at SAP, but if I put my thinking cap on, I would say that we're looking at the beginning of a re-alignment of how GRC is being included in workflow. Stay tuned!