A Fortune 500 Mass Media Communications company, operating dozens of cable networks both in the U.S and internationally and reaching over 3 billion annual viewers in 220 countries worldwide, engaged Focal Point for IAM implementation services. The Communications Company also employed more than 10,000 full-time personnel worldwide, encompassing six defined user roles to securely manage provisions for five target applications across multiple domains.
Challenges
The Communications Company was retiring their homegrown provisioning system and infrastructure and sought to adopt a cloud-based platform to simplify the onboarding and provisioning for a life cycle state-based process. Previously, the Communications Company managed their IAM processes with a legacy system and an extensive collection of SaaS applications.
After the Communications Company was awarded broadcasting rights to the following Olympic Games, they required a more robust, well-designed IAM solution. In order to save time and resources, the new IAM platform needed to fully integrate with the established target applications and an external Games Management Software (“GMS”) to serve as the authoritative source for all Olympic users.
Solution
The Communications Company chose SailPoint’s IdentityNow (“IDN”) to provide a comprehensive, cloud-based IAM solution, and partnered with Focal Point to develop its governance strategy and infrastructure. As an industry-leading IAM platform, IDN would provide:
- Automated processes, workflows, and certifications
- Unrivaled data protection, including password management and a patented approach to encryption and security
- Enhanced audit functionality and data visibility
Phase I: IDN Implementation
Based on a series of interviews, design sessions, and workshops with project stakeholders, Focal Point developed a streamlined IDN design and implementation in 2 releases.
Phase 1 of this project focused on user life cycle management requirements, from onboarding and securing systems to user de-provisioning. Additionally, Phase I involved two large integrations: the GMS (Release I) and SAP Hana ERP (Release II), both of which had challenged the legacy system. Since these applications would supply identity data to IDN, the project relied upon their seamless integrations.
To meet the requirements of the implementation’s critical first phase, Focal Point’s IAM team incorporated:
- Stakeholders’ identified provisioning requirements
- Industry best practices for identity governance, user provisioning, and IAM configuration
- Agile-based project management, expertly scoped tasks, and well-planned project logistics
- Thorough integrations testing and task reviews
- An experience-based implementation methodology
To start, the Focal Point team onboarded contractors and partners for the Olympics, and then tackled the provisioning requirements for full-time employees and contingent workers. Using their knowledge and experience with IDN provisioning, the Focal Point team completed Phase I within budget and on-schedule, take a total of only 26 weeks to complete the entire project.
Phase II: Provisioning Targets and Access Certification Processes
Phase II of the project is currently ongoing. The Focal Point team is developing new provisioning targets and establishing access certification processes for all of the Communication Company’s SOX applications, using a fully Agile approach with schedule releases every 4 to 6 weeks over a 4-month project timeline.
