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As identity and access management tools become more automated, IT pros have slightly easier jobs -- but they can't be completely hands-off just yet. Mobile technology has spurred much of the innovation in the identity and access management (IAM) industry over the last couple of years, encouraging vendors to improve usability on mobile devices. Now, technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, microservices and cloud computing are making their way into identity and access management tools -- all with the goal of making them more seamless, accessible and automated for both end users and IT. "It's much more annoying to enter a password, particularly a long password, on a mobile device," said Mary Ruddy, a research vice president at Gartner. Run in the cloud One trend already taking hold is the emergence of identity management as a service, which runs identity and access management tools in the cloud, where a service provider manages the back end. "We're seeing a lot of movement to the cloud because it's very ...