Automated Provisioning, Account Provisioning, Provisioning 

Simply put, it's a fancy term for creating accounts in various systems. Typically, it's for creating user accounts, but can also be used to create any digital account, including computer accounts, badge accounts, etc.

User Provisioning is by far the most popular component of the Identity Management stack. According to Gartner, almost 2/3rds of Identity Management projects are in fact User Provisioning projects.

• Huge cost-avoidance opportunities
• Great tool to replicate/optimize business processes
• Out of the box connectors to target systems
• Flexible framework for targets without OOB connectors

• Employee onboarding/offboarding to all targets
• Contractor onboarding
• Employee self-service capabilities to update their own profile
• Bulk offboarding/deprovisioning
• Emergency offboarding/deprovisioning
• Approvals based onboarding per target system

Typically, there is a server that stores the business logic, and connectors to various target systems that typically reside on the same box. Some legacy systems may require an agent to be stored on the target systems themselves. Also, there is a datastore (some vendors provide their own, others utilize AD or an existing data store). 

Don't understate the business process analysis part of this project. It takes longer than you expect, but can make all the difference in the world for the success of your project!