Provisioning is the work of giving users the resources they need to perform a task. An example is that of a company hiring a new employee. That employee needs an account on the network, an e-mail mailbox, a profile in the HR system, payroll system, time-reporting system, etc.
Of course, the "user" may not be an employee. He/she may be a contractor, vendor, customer, partner, or some other type of identity involved with your business. Also, the scope of "resources" is not limited solely to user accounts. Users today need access to a wide range of resources:
Identity Management and Provisioning are two closely coupled activities which can easily be confused for each other. Identity Management solutions provide the user interfaces for managing user accounts, i.e. adding, modifying, deleting, assigning roles and rights, etc. Provisioning solutions make sure that the users are properly defined in all of your various systems. Your Identity Management solution should integrate with your provisioning solution so that the provisioning activities are invoked automatically from the IdM solution.
