Unifying identity and access management has been a stretch goal for IT for nearly a decade. At first it was merely the need to have a single, authoritative source of corporate identity such that risks like orphaned or unauthorized accounts could be addressed within the enterprise.
But with a growing number of applications – business applications – being deployed «in the cloud», it’s practically a foregone conclusion that organizations are going to need similar capabilities for those applications, as well.
It’s not easy, there are myriad reasons why unifying identity and access control is a stretch goal and not something easily addressed by simply deploying a solution. Federation of identity and access control requires integration. It may require modification of applications. It may require architectural changes.