The General Electric Company

Success at a Glance

With more than 300,000 employees and contractors, GE faced a giant problem managing accounts for cell phones, audio conferencing services, and e-mail and network access. Manual provisioning for new employees was complex and time-consuming. When an employee was terminated or transferred, delays in cancelling accounts incurred unnecessary expense and created security vulnerabilities. For example, a terminated employee could incur hundreds of dollars of phone charges if an audio conferencing or cell phone account was not quickly closed.

In evaluating potential solutions, GE Corporate focused on flexibility, that is, how quickly and efficiently the solution could adapt to changing requirements. To test this, the GE Corporate team set up a three-day, on-site competition among the top three identity management vendors, including Sun. GE Corporate posed a hypothetical provisioning problem: Interface the vendor's standard identity management product to provision an asset via an e-mail-triggered workflow process, working only from written specifications. While completing that task, GE Corporate then asked them to add the capability to provision a second asset via the same process only for users in a specific organization structure, observing how quickly each team and product could respond and how finely the resources could be scoped to specific subsets of users. After a thorough evaluation, GE chose Sun Identity Manager.

Now Identity Manager keeps track of GE’s personal telecom and other assets for more than 300,000 employees and contractors. GE employees request accounts from approved suppliers and the request is then automatically routed to the employee's approver for review and approval. Working with accurate employee information obtained from GE's human resource application, Identity Manager automatically manages employee system access upon termination or transfer, shutting off e-mail and network logins and initiating approval workflows to review access requirements, minimizing potential security risks and providing greater visibility to more efficiently satisfy audit requirements.

Sun Identity Manager is helping GE comply with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements by managing the provisioning lifecycle (i.e., request, approval, fulfillment, status change and offboarding) of applications that affect the company’s financials. Many of these applications are specific to individual business units, so Identity Manager is spreading beyond GE Corporate to deployments throughout the entire enterprise.

Thanks to Sun Identity Manager, GE Corporate has automated its process of provisioning and deprovisioning personal telecom assets, eliminating manual touchpoints which were inefficient and often error-prone. Automation also saves time and increases productivity for GE employees and administrative staff. In addition, Sun Identity Manager has given GE enhanced security by digitizing the provisioning lifecycle, automating the reaction to key HR events for employees, and providing auditing and reporting for more efficient compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations.