The Sun Java System Identity Manager Boot Camp is Back

Not so long ago, there existed a boot camp on Sun’s leading User Provisioning Tool which is now replaced by a combination of two courses offered by Sun Learning Services viz. IDM 345 & IDM 4484. I have written elsewhere in this blog about the IDM 345 training program and my experience with different participants from different organizations in this corner of the globe. Hence that story needs no retelling. But to give you a brief one liner: these two courses covers the deployment of Sun Java System Identity Manager 5.5 version in a phased manner, the four phases (Regulatory Compliance & Self Service, Delegated Administration, Data Synchronization and Self Service) being distributed equally across the two courses, well almost. That means to say that the IDM 4484 training program titled “Sun Java System Identity Manager:Advanced Deployment” picks up from where IDM 345 stops. This implies, if not plainly expresses, that the audience of the second part of the IDM “boot camp” be thorough with the labs of IDM 345 training program.

And this of course was a cause of concern for me on my stroll towards the Sun Education Center here in Bangalore during the early hours of a fine morning on 06th the November 2006, that not all of my participants for the IDM 4484 training program had a chance to sit through the IDM 345 class conducted earlier. Yeah you rightly guessed that it was also the first ever delivery of Sun Java System Identity Manager: Advanced Deployment course, coded IDM 4484.

A quick recap of IDM 345 was a need of the hour even for those who have had a feel of the same and hence half a day of day one of IDM 4484 went in that fashion. And in the afternoon on day one, we stepped into the discussion on Flat File Active Sync aka FFAS and in turn into the labs. In a few minutes time it was clear to them, my participants, that they would have to write their own Rules from the psuedo code mentioned in the lab exercises book, unlike the step by step lab instructions in the IDM 345 course and that wasn’t all that easy job. And when they started getting the feel of the intriguing lab exercises in IDM 4484, they wondered if it was feasible to extend the training program by one day from four days to five days. But their request was turned down immediately, much to their disappointment of course. On day one, a few of them stayed till 8:30 P.M. to complete the labs. Well, that was to become a routine on the subsequent days of this training.

The intensity of the atmosphere within the classroom on all the days can hardly be reproduced in writing. It was agreed by one and all that the course and the labs were extremely good, but tough. And when it came to the modules on workflows, they literally were sitting on the edge of their seats trying to figure out what could have caused those funny errors, all kinds of them, preventing them from moving ahead with the course. Amazingly, most of them raised themselves to a different level, worked together wholeheartedly and solved majority of the problems that popped up during the exhaustive lab sessions. I must congratulate them to have displayed extreme professionalism in employing their minds to perform all the labs very diligently. I need not mention here that the maturity of audience is a major factor in the successful completion of any training program and these bunch of guys whom you see in the snap below with apparently happy faces are the ones, who made my first IDM 4484 course delivery not only a grand success, but memorable. Thank you so much folks and good luck with your Sun Java System Identity Manager projects.

I was looking forward for my first delivery on this course and I am extremely happy and satisfied that it went through fine. Well, if anyone of you wishes to know the real meaning of the word “boot camp,” I invite them to register for the energy sapping sessions on IDM 4484 and I bet my life, they would realise the meaning of it in just a few moments time. But before you do so, make sure you pick up a few lessons on Sun’s Identity Manager through IDM 345, for otherwise, you might find yourself at sea trying to catch up with the lessons in the Identity Manager Advanced Deployment Course.