By Jean Chorazyczewski, InCommon Academy Director
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
It’s not that higher education institutions lack IAM tools —it’s that many institutions still lack a clear, shared framework to see how their systems connect, where the gaps are, and how to evolve their architecture with confidence.
Whether you’re building from the ground up or dealing with a patchwork of legacy solutions, visualizing your IAM environment (and communicating it to stakeholders) is no small feat. That’s exactly the challenge IAM Sketch aims to address.
A new initiative from InCommon and a key deliverable from the Futures2 strategic report, IAM Sketch introduces a visual planning tool and community resource library built specifically for research and education (R&E) institutions.
IAM Sketch is centered around InCommon’s IAM Conceptual Model, which defines four essential capability areas: Identity Lifecycle, Access Management, Directories & Integration, and Governance & Operations.
In this month’s IAM Online webinar, Grady Bailey and Romy Bolton from Internet2 will offer a deeper peek into IAM Sketch. The duo will break down what it is, how it’s evolving, and how it can help your institution build a more intentional and transparent IAM architecture.
If you’re curious about how to use the Conceptual Model in your own planning, or just want to get involved in shaping the tool’s future, this is your chance to get your foot in the door.
Speakers
senior IAM architect
Internet2
interim AVP, Trust & Identity
Internet2
Q&A
Ahead of the webinar, Grady Bailey offered these valuable insights into IAM Sketch:
A goal identified in the Futures2 report was “Organizations that are part of
the InCommon community feel supported by the guidance Internet2 and InCommon offer them.” The reference
architecture has long been a core identity tool and presented an ideal opportunity to put this goal into
action by updating and modernizing the resources, creating IAM Sketch.
IAM Sketch is designed to help IAM professionals and teams learn best practices,
sketch out their own architecture diagrams, and share their diagrams and experiences back to the community.
By working from a common language and methodology, IAM practitioners can more easily collaborate with their
peers across the world.
IAM Sketch diagrams provide context and details through interactive
tooltips, simplifying how IAM teams within institutions can visualize and share their work and future plans
with institutional governance groups and leadership that may not be IAM experts.
The IAM Conceptual Model is an evolution and spiritual successor of what began as
the Trust and Identity in Education and Research (TIER) Reference Architecture. Reference Architectures
typically describe the functional components in a system. The TIER Reference Architecture was originally
developed to show how the TAP components could be implemented for identity and access management in an
R&E institution.
As institutions and IAM deployments have become increasingly complex and
hybridized between cloud and SaaS solutions and components like those found in the Trusted Access Platform, a conceptual model for IAM,
instead of a reference architecture, was a better fit. The model isn’t a blueprint for success, but rather a
model to architect your own solutions from.
However, the goal remains the same as it was back in
the TIER days. The IAM Conceptual Model takes the complexities of an ideal IAM deployment and breaks it down
into easy-to-digest bites of Capabilities, Components, and Functions.
By looking at IAM as a
modular system and breaking it into smaller parts, rather than seeing it as a monolithic service, it is
easier to understand all the elements of the system and plan improvements to it.
Because IAM Sketch includes all the context and details in the diagrams themselves,
it makes it easy to share architectures with others without the need for long meetings spent explaining all
the aspects of the diagram.
Users of Sketch can share their diagrams with the larger InCommon
community by uploading them to the resource library using a simple form. This will allow others in the
community to learn from their sketch and experiences and compare them to their own.
As more
people use Sketch and share their architecture diagrams, the resource library will continue to grow,
providing even more points of comparison available for institutions to reference.
Join Us for IAM Online
Curious about how IAM Sketch can support better architecture planning and collaboration across the R&E IAM community? Don’t miss our upcoming webinar, “Sketching Success: A Peek at InCommon’s IAM Sketch for Architecture Planning,” on Wednesday, July 16, at 1 p.m. ET.
Attendees will get an early look at InCommon’s new visual planning tool and resource library, designed to help institutions document, share, and evolve their IAM strategies using a common framework.
Whether you’re new to the IAM Conceptual Model or looking for better ways to communicate your architecture to stakeholders, this session offers a forward-looking view into a tool built for our community.
Please note: We’ve introduced a new, improved registration process for our webinars. You’ll now register individually for each webinar, which allows us to deliver content that’s even more aligned with what you want to see. Get ready for more engaging, community-driven webinars designed with you in mind!
Do you have ideas for IAM Webinars you would like to attend? Fill out this form and let us know what you’d like to see.