Custom Connector Development

Oracle offers out of the box connectors for certain target systems like Active Directory, Sun LDAP, and Oracle E-Business Suite. These custom connectors are a fast and convenient way to provision users to the target systems through OIM.
Currently, there are several systems in use at many organizations that have user identities provisioned from sources, like LDAP or Active Directory, that do not employ Oracle connectors. Some examples include:

• Zimbra – Open source e-mail client
• Xythos – File management system
• Google Apps – Cloud based applications and e-mail
• Banner – ERP system completely adaptable for educational institutions
• Blackboard – Educational content management software
• SharePoint – Content management system

Oracle provides a rich API that can be used to interact with OIM to provide the same features as the ones provided by the out-of the box connectors mentioned above.

Custom connectors allow you to synchronize multiple target systems with multiple User Identity Authoritative sources in a single centralized location - the OIM dashboard (web-console). Any changes made in the user accounts or profiles in any of the sources can be propagated to the respective target systems and vice versa (via. provisioning and reconciliation performed by the custom connectors).

For instance, connectors allow you to load all your user accounts from an authoritative source like LDAP into OIM in one step by performing a trusted full-reconciliation on the LDAP. Also, by provisioning a user with LDAP in OIM, any changes made to the user profile in OIM are reflected in the LDAP. The same holds true for any source or target system that has connectors deployed and properly configured with OIM.

Thus, adding, updating and deleting user accounts and their entitlements are automated across enterprise resources.
Integrating OIM with systems by using custom connectors provides the following benefits:

1. Drastic reduction in total cost per employee -  Integration automates provisioning and de-provisioning, reducing the total employee cost. This also applies to the standard attestation and compliance practices, thus lowering the total cost of auditing.

2. Increase enterprise productivity and security - Integrated role and user administration, universal delegated administration, flexible workflows, entitlement-level identity control and advanced request templates enrich user experiences and bolster security

3. Unmatched performance - Oracle Identity Manager 11g's optimized architecture boosts performance with streamlined support of enterprise, distributed and cloud environments.

4. Proven scalability - Based on open architecture, Oracle supports some of the largest provisioning deployments in the industry today; managing thousands of resources and millions of users across geographies