Until recently, the investment value of Identity Management IdM as Software as services SaaS has not been a practical with the existing IdM technologies. IdM or SaaS Identity requires easily deployable solutions with no upfront costs and long term commitments. As the enterprise applications migrate to cloud as SaaS, enterprises want to control access to SaaS applications from security and compliance perspective. Current Identity IdM solutions don’t automatically extend to SaaS Identity. Several of the established Identity IdM Solutions are going throw an overhaul to adapt to the paradigm shift to SaaS Identity. Some of the challenges are as follow us
- Active Directory, IdM Identity Management platforms currently reside inside the firewall, they do not automatically extend to SaaS configurations.
- Granting New Access – There is no automatic mechanism to provision users to SaaS applications. Users have to call help desk to request for access to SaaS applications
- Password Resets - Password resets to applications in the cloud have to be handled by Help desk. Often Help Desk is not equipped to service SaaS requests.
- Compliance Reports - Existing process to generate compliance reports on access to applications don’t extend to the cloud applications. There is a much greater need to monitor, report access to applications that are outside the enterprise firewall.
- Privilege Management – Cloud Applications carry sensitive enterprise information and require approvals before a new user is granted access
Apere offers comprehensive User life Cycle SaaS Identity Management in public cloud configuration with multi-tenant or private cloud configuration with dedicated instance.. Apere’s Identity IdM solution provides Single Sign-On, Password management, Provisioning, De-Provisioning and compliance reporting for enterprise applications, SaaS Applications like Salesforce.com etc and applications that are moving to cloud on demand or for devtest.
Apere’s solution extends enterprise Active Directory, Identity Access Management platforms to automatically control access to cloud applications. When users get added, modified or deleted in Active Directory these changes will be automatically rolled out to cloud applications.
- Granting New Access – Apere’s SaaS Identity solution automatically provision users into SaaS applications when there are added to Active Directory and associated to cloud group. Users can request for additional applications using a self service portal.
- Single Sign-On, Password Resets – Apere SaaS Identity solution provides Single Sign-On for SaaS or cloud applications. True-Login technology allows enterprise Active Directory or IAM logins into SaaS or Cloud applications without having a need to re-enter user credentials. Users don’t need to remember multiple user Id’s and passwords.
- Zero Day Access Control – When a user is disabled in Active Directory, they are automatically denied access to cloud applications. Zero-Day access control automatically extends enterprise security to cloud applications. Apere SaaS Identity solution automatically extends enterprise authentication polices to SaaS Applications
- Compliance Reports – Automated reports can be generated periodically for compliance reporting – Who are the users? What access? When? Reports can be integrated into any existing platform in the enterprise.
- License Management – Apere SaaS IdM Console provides centralized license management console for applications. Summary of actively used licenses, total authorized license enable efficient usage of hosted applications
Traditionally, IdM Identity solutions and services have been reserved for very large enterprises. The significant capital costs, long implementation cycles and heavy maintenance and administration burdens have made it, in many cases, an impossible investment. Over 90% of corporate applications lie outside the scope of an automated solution. Enterprises are rapidly adopting two categories of cloud applications: SaaS applications (Salesforce.com, Google Applications, etc.) outside the enterprise firewall and on-demand migration of applications to the cloud for development and test. SaaS and enterprise cloud applications are forcing enterprise to re-architect user access policies to secure data and control access for compliance. As current IdM solutions do not easily extend to include cloud applications, enterprise adoption of applications in the private or public cloud will increase with the extension of user access security and policy from existing enterprise infrastructure.
While the costs of integrating, upgrading and maintaining a new application in an IdM Identity platform can outweigh the benefits, cloud technology has solved this issue by delivering functionality as a service. This approach effectively eliminates the prohibitive capital and ongoing lifecycle costs, allowing the rapid achievement of customers’ ROI and TCO goals.
Some common complaints about IAM suites are that they are time-consuming to deploy, difficult to integrate with applications and have excessive system costs. Apere aims to counter these objections by delivering an on-demand SaaS IdM Identity management in cloud easily deployed in private clouds, public clouds with multi-tenancy there by fundamentally eliminating the need to purchase and maintain hardware or software on premises. Bringing the same SaaS IdM investment value as the public cloud, the private cloud exists inside the firewall, providing the benefits of computing elasticity without compromising security or compliance. Given this environment, a new solution category has emerged: Identity as a Service (“IdaaS”), which addresses most of these implementation challenges.
Apere is the industry’s first to offer IdM Identity for SaaS and Cloud applications as an extension of existing identity management offerings. The Company’s solution is complementary with the large IAM suites from Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, EMC-RSA Security, IBM, CA, BMC Software, Novell, Microsoft and Beta Systems Software—these solutions can extend the enterprise footprint into the cloud using Apere technology. Apere’s comprehensive workflow for authorizations, role-based provisioning and agent-less SSO technology supports SAML, non-SAML, SPML and web services to provide a comprehensive user life cycle management solution for enterprise and cloud applications.
Technology Overview
Apere offers IdM for SaaS Identity and Cloud applications with SSO, self service portal for end users, automatic on-boarding and off-boarding of users for enterprise applications such as SAP, Oracle, Cerner, Lotus, and over 150 other enterprise applications and over 90 SaaS applications including Salesforce.com, Google Applications, WebEx and GotoMeeting. Apere’ SaaS Identity Solution industry standard protocols like SAML 1.x/2.x and SPML to interact with enterprise IAM or ticket management tools, web services and strong authentication solutions from RSA. Apere’s TrueAuthentication technology integrates with enterprise Active Directory or IAM platforms including SiteMinder and SUN-AM to validate the user before self service portal or SSO are offered. Apere’s SaaS IdM in cloud can be accessed in three varieties in the cloud: On-demand, virtual appliance or a standard 1U Appliance. The Company’s technology can be deployed as a comprehensive IdM solution or a SPML or SAML gateway to access SaaS Applications if an IdM is already deployed.
SaaS and SAML Gateway: Extending Enterprise IdM Identity Management to Cloud and SaaS Applications
