At the end of 2011, the thought leaders behind many of today’s foremost tech companies came forward to reflect on the market trends and accomplishments throughout the year and to share their predictions for 2012.

Idan Shoham (News - Alert), CTO of identity management solutions company Hitachi ID Systems, was one executive to look ahead at the year to come. He shared with TMCnet that in 2012 the identity and access management solutions landscape will appear quite different from its current state, due in part to the introduction of the “Bring Your Own Device” trend, increased prevalence of identity and access management as a service, and the union of identity administration and access governance.

For Shoham, the “Bring Your Own Device” trend is undoubtedly unavoidable as more and more users use their personal smartphones and tablets at the office. But, he said, the trend is also “troubling.”

“Users, including executives, insist on the undeniable convenience of using their own, integrated and super-portable endpoint device. IT professionals are struggling to control access to sensitive corporate data on devices -- which they do not control. It's going to take a lot of innovation to resolve this conflict, but maybe we'll see some progress in 2012,” said Shoham.

Shoham also predicts that talk of identity and access management as a service (IAMaaS) will continue into 2012, but only ever so slightly.

“Hosting an IAM system in the cloud (IAMaaS) and using it to manage identities and entitlements both inside the perimeter and in the cloud is still a new, risky game,” Shoham shared with TMCnet. “This said, there will undoubtedly be some uptake in 2012, but just early adopters.”

2011 also experienced the emergence of “access governance” as a separate entity from “identity administration.” However, Shoham said he doesn’t buy the idea of access governance as a new and separate product category, and sees this trend as temporary.

“In 2012, I predict that we will see the market begin accepting identity administration and access governance as two sides of the same coin,” said Shoham. “Here at Hitachi ID Systems, we used to provide a separate access certification product; at some point we realized this was a mistake and simply folded the features into our Identity Manager. I expect that some of our competitors will do the same in 2012; they may even clean up their user interfaces and lower their TCO.”

According to Shoham, this means “access governance” vendors will need to bolster their solutions in terms of scalability and offerings in order to compete with bigger players in the market.

For those looking to learn more about the identity management market, Hitachi ID Systems (News - Alert) will hold its first webinar of 2012 on Tuesday, Jan. 17, at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET. The webinar, entitled “Hitachi ID Predictions and Forecast for 2012,” will expand upon identity and access management market developments in 2011 and industry predictions for 2012, as shared by Shoham. To register, click here!

Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.