I am not going to waste my time writing about the features of OIM, there's enough companies who will 'market-the-balls' out of OIM and how it's the strategic product solution delivering awesome functionalities blah blah blah.

Instead, I will simply say it does the four following things:

• User Administration
• Provisioning & De-provisioning
• Password Management
• Identity Synchronization

I will use specific terminologies throughout the blog so it's vital for you to know what I mean

• Resource - A type of application like Active Directory
• Resource Object - a specific server/endpoint of the resource
• Resource Object (e.g. a Server) = ADServer1
• Recourse (e.g. an application = Active Directory

As I mentioned before, I will begin to explain OIM in layman terms.

• Bob wants to gain access to the server 'ADServer1'.
• Bob submits a request within OIM,
• Bob's manager approve the request
• The Data owner of ADServer1 approves the request
• The request is sent from OIM to ADServer1 of which the request is then granted

• Bob want to gain access to the Resource object 'ADServer1',
• Bob submits a resource object form to gain access to the ADServer1
• The workflow process begins as the manager reviews the resource object form and approves the request
• The Data Owner then receives the resource object form, and also approves the request
• Once all the requests are made, OIM then creates a process form and submits that to the resource object.

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