For service providers the provisioning of services, such as IT services, to their clients can be a particularly complex and time-consuming task, especially where a client organization has multiple users that are to be given access to the services.
To provision a service to users of a client organization, a service provider has to identify which client organization users (hereinafter referred to generally as users) are to be given access to the service. In many cases the service provider also has to identify each user's role or required level of access (such as ‘unprivileged user’, ‘supervisor’, ‘application administrator’, ‘database administrator’, etc.) for the service. The service provider then has to configure the service to give each user the appropriate level of access. Configuring may typically include, for example, assigning to each user a username, generating a password, and communicating the assigned username and generated password to each user.
Typically the client organization provides lists identifying which users are to be given access to the service and, where appropriate, the corresponding level of access required. The service provider uses the provided lists and, in a largely manual operation, configures the service for each user.
In large client organizations, where many hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of users are to be given access to a service the provisioning, or ‘on-boarding’, process is typically a complex, time-consuming, and largely manual process. Furthermore, as users leave or join a client organization the list of users provided by the client organization to the service provider may quickly become out-of-date, creating further difficulties.