Navigating IT Fragmentation from Decentralized Growth
UNIQA has grown very strongly in the past decade. Its national subsidiaries are largely independent on the organizational level. As a result, IT infrastructures are heterogeneous, with Identity and Access Management particularly affected. Regional service providers operate the applications required in each case. Previously, a central IAM system based on One Identity 6 compiled the data from the regional companies. After this system became outdated, and an update by the previous external service provider proved difficult, iC Consult 2019 was asked to evaluate the project.
Strategic IAM Rebuild to Unify and Modernize Systems
The initial workshops took place at the end of October 2019. In addition to having the current status assessed by iC Consult, the central UNIQA IT department also wanted to get an overview of One Identity 8 and its possibilities.
During further investigations, it became apparent that rebuilding the system and replicating the previous functionality would be more efficient than updating from version 6 to version 8 and subsequently adapting numerous, barely standardized applications. UNIQA agreed with this assessment and requested that iC Consult implement the solution.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, it affected almost every part of society, including IT projects. As a result, the collaboration of the virtual teams in Munich, Vienna, Cluj, and Plovdiv became even more independent and proactive – truly agile software development. The result speaks for itself: The rebuild went live after only four months. Since November 13, 2020, all of UNIQA International, UNIQA Austria, and their active directories are connected to the Group IAM solution One Identity Manager 8, and securely synchronized with the central directory “uniqagroup.net”.
In addition to the purely technical aspects, iC Consult was also tasked with training the central UNIQA IT department. Increasingly, maintenance and operations can once again be carried out by the company’s own experts.
A Unified, Scalable IAM Platform Powering Future Innovation
The new system provides a solid foundation, with all of the previous functions in a standardized form. At the same time, it ensures fast, simple expandability. Various services that were previously connected to local IAM systems can now be migrated to the central platform. In this way, it was possible to expand functionality for UNIQA, while simultaneously improving the maintenance and service of previously less-standardized tools.
Last but not least, this offers yet another opportunity. In addition to the One Identity IAM solutions mentioned above, UNIQA also operates its own independently-developed IAM solution in Austria, which can now also be replaced. For the first time, a uniform IAM platform is available throughout the company. This is the ideal environment for further projects in the pipeline. For example, the new central IAM system will serve as a data supplier for future role mining and role management, largely automating the granting and revocation of user rights.
