Welcome to Conformity's May 2009 Newsletter

In This Issue

Pass It On

SaaS, the Cloud and the 'Big Bang'

We recently wrapped us some interesting market research on the topic of adoption of SaaS and cloud-based services and the management challenges it is creating for IT organizations.  Based on interviews with IT and business executives at nearly 50 midsize and large enterprises, we've summarized our findings in a new whitepaper titled 'SaaS, the Cloud and the Big Bang'.  In it we explore how SaaS and cloud-based services are fundamentally disrupting traditional IT management models.  We also discuss the convergence of identity and systems management issues that SaaS is driving, and emerging perspectives on requirements for a new generation of management solutions.  If you're interested in receiving a copy of the whitepaper, please contact us.

Conformity Joins NetSuite SuiteCloud Developer Network

We're excited to announce that Conformity has joined the NetSuite SuiteCloud Developer Network, a multi-tiered program that enables commercial software developers to quickly go to market with new on-demand business applications that leverage the power of NetSuite's core business suite.  In conjunction with the program, NetSuite and Conformity will be jointly marketing Conformity's SaaS management solution to customers seeking a central point of management for their users of NetSuite, Salesforce.com, Google Apps and other major SaaS applications.  You can visit our NetSuite SuiteApp.com listing here.

Is SaaS Adoption Getting Ahead of Itself?

SaaS is proving to be a disruptive technology, challenging IT's comfort level in areas such as compliance and control, and impacting entrenched legacy on-premise vendors and solutions. 

As with past disruptive technologies, the SaaS industry must address the issues and challenges preventing broader adoption (particularly in the enterprise), while still preserving the positive characteristics that made it disruptive in the first place.   Areas that the SaaS industry needs to address as it matures includes areas such as business process integration, user management and reporting, and policy monitoring and enforcement to name a few. 

Read about our perspectives on this and other topics related to management of on-demand environments at our blog on SaaS Management.

The SaaS User Provisioning Challenge

Effective user provisioning requires much more than just ensuring users have an active account and access to a given service or SaaS application.  User authorizations and permissions within the service also need to be consistent with role-based access control (RBAC), least privilege and segregation-of-duties (SOD) concepts.  This requires that organizations ensure that permissions and authorizations are consistent across services, not just within each individual SaaS silo.  

What makes provisioning challenging is that each SaaS service provider has their own unique role, profile and authorization model optimized around the particular problem set they address.   Virtually all SaaS user attribute and permission models are unique to the individual vendor, with some services providing the ability to configure over 50 different user attributes.  In our mind, proper user provisioning ensures that user accounts and all associated authorizations are consistent with corporate policy, which is a much deeper, more challenging problem that it first appears.

We're Hiring!

Are you or someone you know interested in joining the Conformity team? Please check our website for our latest job postings.   

Our featured listing this month is for a SaaS Integration Analyst.  Based in either Austin or the Bay Area, this position will be responsible for leading integration engagements with Conformity's customers and strategic SaaS service provider partners. 

If you or someone you know may be interested, please forward a cover letter and resume to jobs@conformity-inc.com.