What are Connectors in Identity Systems?

What is Connector? 

Connector can also be referred as adapters. Connectors are the components that are used to connect third party systems/Application with Identity Management system.

Example: 

Sailpoint is connected to Active Directory using AD connector.

OIM is connected to Database using DB Connector.

Connector maintains information about target application, by connecting to target application connector can fetch identity from it or can push identity to it.

Why Connector is required? 

Connector is the only way to transmit data between third party application and identity management.

What are custom Connectors?

By default Identity management products doesn't support all the third party applications in such case developers need to develop custom connector based on the requirement.

Custom connector development may vary from product to product. Custom Connector basically uses identity system APIs and also third party system APIs or web services.

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