IBM Acquires Encentuate

IBM acquired Encentuate for an undisclosed sum. This underscores the validity of Forrester's prediction that the enterprise single sign-on (E-SSO) market in identity and access management (IAM) will grow from E-SSO's $250 million in 2006 to $2 billion in 2014 - a CAGR of 28.5%. What are the likely implications of this acquisition in the E-SSO marketplace?

1.  After CA and Novell, now IBM will have a fully integrated IAM suite in which E-SSO will be first acquired, but later an organically grown product offering - provided that IBM is successful with integrating not only technologies, but the Encentuate engineering, support, and sales resources. Past experience with similar acquisitions show that this often sounds easier than it actually is.

2. Other E-SSO vendors (ActivIdentity and especially Passlogix) will lose some of their market share and will need to ramp up investment in product development to be able to keep their leading edge in product functionality.

Overall, IBM's move signals that E-SSO has become a mature and viable technology which - in conjunction with user account provisioning - will continue to drive the IAM market growth.