I have been working with many FIM projects over the last 4 years. One common question in all projects is… Why FIM? A common answer is COTS and CBC.

All customers I worked with have had some kind of IdM solution in place. Commonly it’s a self-made solution and the customers have finally started to realize the true cost of maintaining this homegrown solution. They realize they want a COTS, Commercial Of The Shelf, product.

Another common request is to introduce self-service. Not only things like SSPR, Self-Service Password Reset, but also to delegate tasks like creating users and managing them. Using the built-in FIM Portal to allow this has actually proven quite useful. Many are complaining about the lack of functionality in the RCDC (FIM portal forms), but customers realizing the cost of homegrown solutions are accepting this shortcomings in order to go for CBC, Configure Before Code (or Configure Before Customize).

So if you ever wondered… Why FIM? I think a simple answer is because you want COTS and CBC!