European Identity Award for outstanding projects, innovations and advancements in the field of digital identity management was presented by the analyst group Kuppinger Cole at a festive ceremony at the European Identity Conference 2010, the leading European venue for Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Governance, Risk Management and Compliance (GRC) in Munich.
Awards were given in six categories. Besides the award for “best innovation” in IAM or GRC, the categories include best program or initiative in internal projects, B2B, B2C, Cloud Computing and eGovernment/eHealth.
Vendors, system houses, consultants and enterprise users were asked to submit suggestions for the award. Additionally, the shortlist included projects and initiatives that have come to the attention of Kuppinger Cole analysts over the course of the last 12 months. The three award winners in each category were chosen from this list.
In the category “Best Innovation”, the European Identity Award will be shared by Microsoft and IBM for their solutions “U-Prove” and “Idemix”. Both solutions provide minimal disclosure of identity-related information and are therefore seen by Kuppinger Cole as pioneering efforts in enhancing online privacy and security. A third award went to Wipro Technologies for their IAM appliance solution based on Novell software which provides a full set of hardware and software components based on standards and optimized for easy configuration.
The award for “Best Internal Project” was shared by three winners. One award went to Şekerbank T.A.Ş of Turkey for a solution developed together with Smartsoft and Oracle for providing risk-based authentication and authorization using neural networks. The second prize was awarded to Hannover Municipal Works for their IAM project based on a product supplied by Voelcker Informatik denoted by full ITIL integration as well as interfaces to a wide range of service and configuration management systems. The third winner is Schenker AG, a major logistics company which received the award for a project undertaken in conjunction with ic-Consult and using technology from IBM and which provides an innovative and consistent approach to Web Services.
In the category “Best Project B2C”, the prize was once again split between three contestants. The University of Washington was honored for its identity federation solution in research and education which was developed together with Microsoft and is intended to form part of their “Live@Edu” initiative. The Catholic University of Leuven (K.U.L.) in Belgium received a prize for its identity management solution for students and other groups, a solution that is tightly linked to SAP and which places a strong focus on regulatory compliance. Finally, the Kassenärztliche Vereinigung Bayerns (KVB), the association of statutory health insurance physicians in the German state of Bavaria, receives an award for its simple solution for strong authentication developed with the help of Devoteam Danet.
The award for “Best Project B2B” was also shared by three winners. BMW was honored for its identity management solution covering more than 100,000 dealerships and other external users, replacing existing legacy systems and developed together with Omada and Microsoft. Thomson Reuters received a prize for its solution enabling users to easily and securely access various application services, and which is based on Microsoft Windows Identity Foundation. The third award in this category went to the Finnish State Railways Group for a system that enables consistent authorization management between different organizations which was developed with the help of RM5 Software.
In the category “Best IAM Project in Cloud Computing”, the award went to three projects run by single hosting providers or as multi-client cloud services. The first went to Orange FT Group of France for their innovative solution involving authentication of multiple identity and service providers within federated environments. Another award went to BasisOne, a hosting provider based in South Africa with a strong focus on SAP solutions, for an infrastructure project involving IAM technology provided by Novell. The third award was received by Piaggio Group of Italy for a hosted IAM solution based on products by Engiweb and focusing on defined, enterprise-wide business processes.
The European Identity Award for eGovernment/eHealth went to the University Clinic Munich for an outstanding project involving authentication and authorization for internal systems, which was developed together with Siemens and revolves around an especially lean and efficient authentication process.
The most important award of the year in the view of Kuppinger Cole also belongs to the category “eGovernment/eHealth”. It honors the German Ministry of the Interior’s electronic identity card project (“neuer Personal-Ausweis”, or “nPA”). The new digital document will be introduced in November of this year and is currently undergoing final tests. It will eventually replace existing ID cards for all German citizens and can be used to provide identity credentials for online transactions. The award honors the innovative and well thought-out concept that addresses concerns about data security in exemplary fashion.
Both the number of nominees for the European Identity Award 2010 and the quality of the project submitted far surpassed last year. This is seen by Kuppinger Cole as a general sign of increasing maturity in IAM and GRC solutions. Especially notable was the number of nominations in the category “Cloud Computing”, a trend that the analyst group feels will be sure to continue over the next few years.
You’ll find photos of all the winners in our gallery.
The video of the ceremony is available online, too.
