IAM, What’s a Metaverse ???
A metaverse, by definition is a virtual world. Think of a metaverse in the general sense of IAM to be a blank database (or in the case of Novell IAM products a Blank eDirectory), however after you fill it with data its like an authority, in the sense that the data that is in the Metaverse is (after rules have been run on it) the data which is authoritive for other systems, after all you rules are run you would then sync back Certain attributes with your Active Directories, LDAP Directories or your SQL Server.
Above is an example of a basic IAM implementation, in the above example data may be tracked and linked from various different sources into the metaverse, you would then provide certain rules and sync back to other sources or systems.
A widely used example of this is the Web Portal scenario, most companies operate intranets, most of these would have some form of directory or people finder built into them so staff can look up each other and get phone numbers, emails, office locations etc.. Also on this portal staff can edit their own details so other staff can contact them… Pretty cool right ? Well kind of, the trouble is you have to possibly sign into a web portal open up the directory and then search for the user just to try get their email address.
To get this data associated to the users active directory account most companies use an IAM solution, this can help keep both AD and the Web Portal up to date and accurate.
From an Exchange house we can take the “mail” attribute from the user’s AD account, match their Web portal account by their logon ID (which presumes the logon ID is the same on both AD account and web portal) Apply the Mail attribute as the users Email address. From the Web Portal DB we can then take the Users Phone Numbers, Address etc… and then import it to AD. This then means instead of logging onto web portal’s and doing a search there its a simple task of Opening the GAL in Outlook, input the users name and hey presto there is some up to date accurate details!
Simple!