During the recent Catalyst Conference I found time to chat with all the usual identity management suspects, but there were also a couple of folks I met with for the first time. On the theory that if I didn't know about them then you don't either (else you would have told me about them, wouldn't you?) I'll introduce them to you today and get to the "old gang" next time.

First up is Symplified, which calls itself, “The On Demand Identity Company.” What they’re selling is not “identity as a service (IaaS),” but identity service for software-as-a-service (SaaS) computing. CEO Eric Olden and CTO Darren Platt (both veterans of Securant) explained that at Symplified, they want to change how companies do business online by providing security, manageability, compliance and integration that scales across the cloud. 

They begin with the thought that licensing costs are just the tip of the iceberg for identity services. Their research shows the integration and deployment costs of an identity management software rollout typically exceeds the cost of the software license by a factor of 3X-5X. Simply moving the service into the cloud saves much of that money. But, additionally, it improves scalability. The clincher for some folks, though, might be the Symplified guarantee: “Symplified is 100% tied to your success. If you aren’t successful you don’t pay. If our solution doesn’t work for you, turn it off. It’s that simple.” Maybe you could Symplify your life.

Later in the week, I met with my neighbors (their office is only about two miles from mine) at Rohati. CEO Shane Buckley, VP Strategy Prashant Gandhi, and Marketing VP Steven Wastie were keen to impress me with the factor that they think sets apart their entitlement management solution - which they dub “network-based entitlement control” (NBEC). 

I lost count of the number of times Buckley used the words “fast” and “speed,” but the implication (if “implication” means “let’s repeat it until he’s senseless”) was that their product could handle more real-time analyses of resource requests than any of the competition. Rohati’s Transaction Networking System (TNS) comes in two sizes: one for midsized data centers, one for large-sized organizations. These are self-contained appliances that enable context-specific, attribute-based entitlement control on a per-transaction basis across an enterprise’s full range of applications and resources. Through the use of open standards (such as the XACML access-control language) and an ever increasing library of application, service and protocol standards, the TNS - through a central GUI-based console - enables centralized and delegated configuration, administration, and management of TNS platforms and entitlement policies. Entitlement management is a hot area right now, and TNS might be a useful appliance for you. After all, it’s fast.

Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.