The set of processes, procedures and technologies of IT systems is a fundamental component to achieve the possible integration of all IT resources.
Identity management is the set of business processes, and a supporting infrastructure for the creation, maintenance, and use of digital identities. Identity and access management refers to the processes, technologies and policies for managing digital identities and controlling how identities can be used to access resources.
Identity management and the provisioning of access to company resources involve the careful execution of three processes:

• the access model process
• the workflow process and
• the identity process.

The access model process maps established business policies to roles and rules to be used when creating and managing an identity. Relevant factors include information security policies, separation of duties (SOD) rules, customer requirements and external influences, such as government and industry regulations.
The workflow process takes established business policies, such as business processing and approval requirements, and establishes the step-by-step flow of how an identity is created.
The identity process is where the mapping of the roles, rules and workflow for a specific user come together to create an account (or set of accounts) on a target or more likely, a set of target platforms. This ensures that the user will have all the account attributes and privilege assignments needed to access company resources. Each process includes 6 common actions: create, use, change, report, log and retire.

Improved User Experience
The right identity and access management solution will greatly enhance the users’ experience, helping them to control their on-line identities because they will no longer be required to manage a hoard of passwords. An integrated identity and access management solution also enables simplified sign-on so users can move seamlessly across applications and even domains. Such a system will even create a “circle of trust” in which participating organizations can verify the authenticity of users in a federated model. The results will be productive, satisfied users.

• Investment Protection - Enhanced Integration
  Seamless integration into an organization’s heterogeneous e-business environment is critical. Identity and access management solutions will act much like “middleware”, enabling organizations to manage digital identities across their diverse and expanding infrastructure. A standards based approach will play an important role in this enhanced integration, ensuring investment protection and dramatically reducing the risk of custom integration.
• Cost Savings - Multi-purpose Platform
  Organizations will be able to manage multiple authentication options (i.e. Tokens, smartcards, certificates, passwords, etc.) from a single platform, providing choice in any environment and enabling web services to leverage the platform.
• Cost Reduction - Centralized Administration
  The right identity and access management solution will enable organizations to simplify the management of digital identities and security policies with one administrative model. This translates into lower administrative costs and reduced resource burden.
• Risk Mitigation - Enhanced Security
  Identity and access management solutions will ensure greater levels of security to match the grooving risk of exposure and high stakes involved in e-business and web services. The solutions will shift fluidly with an organization’s perimeter protecting the business at application level.