Comments on: Further into Identity as a Platform Play

By: albertpaul68

albertpaul68 — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 09:47:25 +0000

Though this article brings up some interesting points on SaaS vendors, the real point is the value a security based SaaS vendor can give beyond just Identity Management. When looking for a vendor, is there a strategic partnership play that can be made with multiple products that they offer? Products such as Role and Compliance, Log Management, Access control, etc. tie into Identity Management to help companies gain control of their users, Federated partners and their access into systems and data. A true cloud based security ccna vendor should be able to offer a suite of these products that are managed from a central console. The cloud offers companies the opportunity to quickly gain access to these tools that they might otherwise have difficulty implementing themselves. It also allows IT to concentrate on business revenue generating products and offload these backend systems to a cloud vendor with the expertise.

By: dale

dale — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 21:32:45 +0000

Tim, I completely agree. I think for many SMBs and companies that grow up in the cloud, they will also expect their user accounts to be held in the cloud — and often at the center of an application markeplace like Salesforce user accounts are today. My point was that many companies won’t move their user accounts to the cloud, and yet hosters can still be the hub of an application marketplace by providing identity services that securely connect applications to those enterprise identities.

By: Tim Wessels

Tim Wessels — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:09:49 +0000

What if we are not talking about “enterprise” customers here? What about the 90M SMBs out there who may or may not have any identity management system? If they have none or just a small eDir or AD identity management system on their premises, wouldn’t locating their identity management service in the cloud be the way to go? I think it makes sense to have SMBs subscribe to Identity-as-a-Service especially when all of their data and apps will be located in the cloud.