When I read that Oracle had purchased the aggressively-growing authentication and identity vendor Bharosa, I immediately wondered “is this primarily a (financial services) vertical or IAM (identity access management) horizontal play? From reviewing Oracle documents my sense is that it’s the latter, although Oracle’s strong ambitions in the financial industry certainly must have played into consideration. In an email to me, Bharosa CEO Jon Fischer stated “After 15 years, 3 ventures, I think going to work for Oracle is too good to pass up…I think (we’re) the leaders in IAM”. The tie in between Oracles database and existing identity efforts and Bharosa’s authentication capabilities makes a lot of sense, simply because it extends the security and utility-drive permissions required to get more from Oracle’s database capability.

As with other identity capabilities (federated, etc) IAM has been solidly in the back shop, which means that IT-focused research companies such as the Gartner Group and Burton have focused more on the area than Javelin. Yet we’ve written at least 26 reports touching on the customer-facing aspects of alerts in our five short years, as I’ve seen that identity capabilities must soon extend right out to the customer (consumer or business), allowing them to do what they’ve always wanted: have the final say in how their identity information is used.

The old “islands of automation” comment might well be adapted to “islands of identity”. The first company that bridges the back end (via database) with the front-end (via what we call IFMs or interactive financial messages, and UDLAPs, or user-defined limits and prohibitions) will reap handsome rewards.

In financial services and payments, the trick is to bridge the islands of identity directly from the core processing systems or payment account record out to notifications and controls that securely and conveniently reside in the hands of the authenticated customer. The big payoff is asset-gathering and loyalty.