They've taken the crucial parts of user management - the directory, public-key infrastructure, authentication and access control - and put them together . . . in an effort to ensure they work together.

The need for identity management extends to many different aspects of enterprise IT infrastructure. Given the heterogeneous nature of today's IT environments, partnerships between enterprise applications suppliers and identity management vendors are an important component of enterprise integration solutions. The partnership between Siemens and SAP demonstrates this trend and will be especially valuable where the two companies share common customers.

You can change only what people know, not what they do.

New management is now in control of everything.

Most of the management team feels that we are not a lean and mean competitor,

Control of all three of these projects under one management team should lead to a more rational market.