Reflections of an Identity professional - Catalyst once again

As I start the journey to San Diego for Gartner Catalyst 2015, I have had the opportunity to reflect on how much things have changed since first attending t event when it was Burton Catalyst. As a legacy Novell MCNE in the 1990s, when I first attended Catalyst in 2003 time frame, it was as if I were in a community of kindred spirits - technologies that understood directory services technologies and their place in the IT operating environment. The "new" identity related services at the time were web access management and provisioning solutions. Thanks to SoX-404, compliance spend was the gift that kept on giving. Being a part of the second wave of identity provisioning solutions, (I ran professional services for Waveset Technologies) it was a very exciting time to be in the Identity space. I attended Catalyst annually and became good friends with a number of others in the industry as well as the city of San Diego. I saw the many of same people every year. For the most part, the only  things that changed were the business cards and the amount of grey hair. We have a saying in the identity business - there are only 50 of us and we just change employers. 

Fast forward to 2015 and so much has changed. Burton exists no more but lives on through Gartner.  Ian Glazer will not be presenting on stage but is still in the business (Salesforce.com being the benefactor). The conference no longer focuses solely on Identity and Access Management (#IAM) but a variety of topics including #cloud, big data, analytics and of course #IoT.  As of June 1st 2015, I now have the privilege of leading Deloitte's identity management practice within Deloitte's Advisory Cyber Risk Services and will again be attending Catalyst. 

#DigitalIdentity is the lifeblood of the global economy. It is an exciting time to be at the forefront of Identity Management and it is good to be back!