vscheuber's blog

was i shouting when novell consulting, about 6.5 years ago, installed and launched consoleone on my admin workstation. at that time i had just filled a position in an nt server engineering group at an international company located in zuerich, switzerland. before that position i was working in a small company as a web and database developer and, on the side, was also managing that company's netware environment. i was away from the novell business for about 6 months only, and so i expected to get good old nwadmin on my box but in stead: "what the heck!" i got consoleone. a java application that took about 2 minutes to start and offered only limited managing capabilities at that time.

i wonder how many "what the heck!"s went around the globe when, after consoleone had finally matured, it was violently killed and replaced by imanager, a terribly clumsy and slow web application at that time and offering only limited managing capabilities.

and i hope we caused at least as many "what the heck!"s when we shipped designer for identity manager 1.0 mid last year. but this time not because we did a brutal rip and replace of an existing admin tool. instead we added to what was already there. we brought the rich client back onto the novell administrators and developers workstations. the echo so far has been overwhelmingly positive.

so have we finally found the right balance? is designer the answer to all the cry-outs for help: "i want a rich client!". until my very last day in novell consulting i had console one installed on my laptop but i considered myself a dinosaur. i had the chance to work with a good friend from consulting recently and as i asked him to log into my development tree, i expected him to login using imanager but "what the heck!" this good old friend, in the year 2006, launched consoleone!

so now please tell me: what the heck is it that you really want?

now that brainshare is over and has been a huge success, the designer team is back finding out whatelse you, elvis ah... our customer, the king, may need most in the near future.

whereas the main goal for designer 1.0 and 1.1 was to enable you to do all the configuration tasks you had been doing in imanager until then, our focus has now changed a little. i'd like to share with you some of our thoughts and methodology how we discover new features that we need to integrate into designer.

when a company decides to investigate an identity management solution, it usually starts a long and sometimes hairy process. roughly, this process is defining the business case, developing the solution, then implementing/deploying and finally maintaining and monitoring the solution.

in the past novell covered exactly the development part of this process. we think that designer can do more than just configuration and development. we want to support the whole process:

as you can see, we cover already quite a bit of the whole process, but we know we can do even more. we want to accompany you from the first day in your project until the last day of that project and even beyond into the maintenance phase.

let us know what you think of this approach. do we meet your expectations this way?

hi. my name is volker scheuber. i work on the identity manager and designer projects. i was born in germany, grew up, got married and two children in switzerland and live now with my family in utah, usa.

i have spent my first five years with novell in novell consulting, switzerland. now that i'm part of engineering, i'm putting all my energy into providing the tools our customers, partners and consultants need to successfully deploy identity management projects. what i have learned during the delivery of about twenty five idm projects in emea will keep me busy for the next little while trying to merge it into our tools around identity management.

with my relocation to the states my understanding of identity got re-defined. this is why and how:

i learned that i have to follow these steps to establish an identity in my new host country:

• get a visa
• get a checking account (difficult without a social but not impossible)
• get a social (social security number)
• establish multiple lines of credit
• get cars. the country is so huge that one car is not enough. get at least two.
• get utah driver licenses
• find and buy a house

when i visited the u.s. last summer, i checked out different banks to open a bank account. this turned out to be a difficult thing without a us passport, no us id of any kind and no social. i finally succeeded, though, finding a bank that does these things.

lesson learned: as long as i do not have any kind of u.s. id, i will be a suspect, no matter how good my record is back in switzerland or anywhere else. there is no such thing like global identity federation. good or bad? i haven't decided on that, yet.

at the us embassy in bern, switzerland, my family and i received our visas for the united states. we thought: well, that's it, we're in. we didn't realize it all had only just begun:

during our immigration when we arrived at our port of entry, a mistake happened and my wife got my L-1 stamp on her I-94 form where as i got her L-2 stamp on mine. this basically gave her work permit and revoked mine.

lesson learned: my identity is nothing i own. others own it for me. if they screw up, i'm screwed up. my biometrics don't matter, my record doesn't matter. only the record that others have of me matters and determines their actions regarding me.

so i applied for a social security number. but i was told: no. you gotta fix your I-94 first. showing them my passport with the L-1 visa in it didn't do any good. so i had to take my whole family and start a marathon from office to office to find out how to fix our identity, ahm... I-94 forms. we finally got this done and i was able to apply for a social security number.

next step was to buy cars. we wanted to get rid of the rental car asap. so we checked out several car dealers. several deals were almost closed. but always they asked the question: may we have your social? no social no deal. actually they didn't care for my social but for my non-existing credit record tied to my non-existing social.

at the same time we started to look for houses and actually found one and got it under contract. now we had 4 weeks to receive our social before the contract expired and we would loose the house.

lesson learned: having an identity is not enough. you need the right type of identity. the environment you are in defines what the right type of identity is. the environment you are in also sets the rules how to obtain it.

now that we knew we are going to get a social for me (not for the rest of my family, though) the next problem arose. the bank wanted to find out if i was a reliable person for the house loan. so we arranged several phone calls with swiss credit institutes and banks who would give them information on my credit record in switzerland. the bank did this effort for the house loan but for car loans they said: we don't do that. you have to build up your credit, first.

lesson learned: good records tied to the wrong identity don't help. good records need to be tied to the right identity. records cannot be transferred from one to another identity.

my social security number arrived 3 days before the contract for the house expired. our credit record was established and our money from switzerland arrived on the last day and we were able to close on the house.

because we were able to establish our credit record for the house, the car dealers all the sudden were willing to sell us cars. having a social also allowed me to get cell phones, a regular phone and cable tv.

lesson learned: i am a very lucky and happy person having all the identities i need to take care of my family in a foreign country. i realize that not everybody is blessed like this.

with our identity management product here at novell we cannot change reality for people but we can make sure realty doesn't get manipulated and identities are given the proper respect they deserve.

my team is working hard on making managing identities easier.

visit us at brainshare in salt lake city next week:

• all day long from monday to friday in the solutions lab
• on tuesday and wednesday in the tut160 session (presentation and demo of bleeding edge functionality in designer for identity manager)
• on thursday in the bof161 session (round table discussion)