Posted by Bob Craig - Dir Prod Marketing on Fri, Jan 08, 2010
The industry analyst landscape has been going through some major changes lately. In the latest development, Gartner has acquired Burton Group shortly after snapping up AMR Research in December.
As a leader in the identity and access management (IAM) market, Courion has had positive, fruitful relationships with the IAM analysts at both firms. We have a great deal of respect for the breadth of knowledge and customer service focus demonstrated by both groups of analysts and are proud of Courion's market leadership positioning in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Provisioning and Burton's Market InSight user provisioning report.
Burton provided a valuable, independent perspective which we, many of our customers (and, yes, even our competitors), relied on for an alternative point of view. They have long had a reputation for a high level of technical expertise, while Gartner has generally placed more emphasis on the strategic business impact of IAM. While we will miss the opportunity to compare and contrast Burton's free-wheeling, technological approach with Gartner's corporate viewpoint, the combination of these points of view has the potential to significantly strengthen Gartner's IAM and other security capabilities.
We think both outlooks have a place in the market and hope that Gartner employs a "big tent" strategy that accommodates diverse points of view. Knowing the Gartner team as we do, we are optimistic they will work hard to make the Burton analysts feel welcome. It would be unfortunate if some of the exceptional, creative Burton analysts felt that their perspective wasn't appreciated at Gartner.
However this event turns out, we wish our colleagues in both organizations well and look forward to continuing to work them in the future.
Posted by Chris Sullivan - VP Customer Solutions on Thu, Jan 07, 2010
Here's an old adage that we've all heard - the value of the whole exceeds the sum of the parts. Is it true? Well, according to the governments of the United States and Japan it is. If you include the skin, the human body is comprised of 65% oxygen, 18% carbon, 3% nitrogen and 9 other common and inexpensive elements down to a mere 0.00004% Iodine. Taken in their parts, 170 lbs of that is worth about $4.50.
But if you put it together in the right way, you can come up with the likes of Einstein, a Warren Buffet, a Gandhi, a Mother Theresa, an Alfred Bernhard Nobel.
It's similar in our space. We have all the elements - provisioning, compliance, role management, governance, sensitive data analysis, sensitive activity analysis, entitlement management and even security in the cloud (which we all know to be the next big thing until the next big thing comes along). Where we are collectively weak is the ability to put all of these things together in sophisticated ways where the whole exceeds the value of the sum of the parts - and by a whole lot.
With that, here are my 3 predictions for 2010:
- 2010 will not be about the cloud. We've been living in the clouds for years and Courion has already has been weaving our customer's provisioning, access
compliance and access assurance frameworks into those clouds with connectors like GE Pharmacy, Fedlink, Equifax and Salesforce. That's not interesting.
- Companies will take advantage of commoditized pricing for custom connectors to dramatically increase the systems and applications for which they automate
compliance, risk management and controls today.
- Companies will realize a dramatic increase in the value of what they already have by pulling together all of the elements in sophisticated ways to assure access
and predict and remediate risk before breaches occur - Identity Intelligence and Analytics will be the next real big thing.
Did you know?
I presume you know that the Nobel Prizes (including the coveted Nobel Peace Prize) come from the institute of the same name. But did you know that the philanthropist who founded the institute was also the inventor of dynamite and he made his fortunes in the 1800s as a major arms manufacturer and dealer?
Define irony.