Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot, and old lang syne?
Yes, it’s hard to believe that tonight we’ll be singing that traditional New Year’s Eve tune as the ball drops in historic Times Square in New York City. It is interesting that we sing this song as one year passes into memory and a new one begins as it brings up the question of whether it is OK to forget the past.
From Avatier‘s standpoint, 2012 is definitely not a year it will soon forget. In fact, it is a year that it will want to remember and build upon as it continues to move forward and advance the innovations in Identity and Access Management that it made over the past 12 months.
Let’s take a look back…
Innovative New Products
Avatier started out the year by releasing Avatier Identity Anywhere (AIMS) 9.0. The new release of the company’s core suite feature increased performance, security and scalability. Within no time, 25 percent of Avatier users had already upgraded to AIMS 9.0. By the end of the first quarter of the year, AIMS 9.0 had already supported the concurrent logon of more than 50,000 users with less than a five-second delay, and had been optimized for use with up to 1 million identities and nearly as many groups.
Next up was Group Self-Service, part of Avatier’s Identity and Access Risk Management (ARM) suite. A group and distribution list management software solution, Group Self-Service puts self-service group management into the hands of those charged with overseeing and participating in their groups. In doing so, risks associated with active directory group and distribution list management are lowered, group sprawl is eliminated, and IT and help desks are freed to focus on other issues in the organization.
Closing out the year, Avatier launched a pair of products at the Gartner IAM Summit that expanded its innovation in the cyber security field even further.
First to be unveiled at Gartner was Compliance Auditor, a new access certification tool that allows auditing of virtually any system or asset on the network. Compliance Auditor also became the first access certification tool to offer a universal mobile touch interface, enabling IT professionals the ability to invoke audit functions such as approving and revoking access, deleting accounts, allowing exceptions, attaching evidence and sending access validation audit messages from anywhere at any time. Compliance Auditor also uses risk metrics based on real-time data to provide scores on potential risk factors around access so the most sensitive access rights receive the appropriate attention.
Right on the heels of Compliance Auditor, Avatier introduced Group Requester as part of its Identity and Access Management suite. Group Requester addresses security group and distribution list management risk by ensuring groups and distribution lists are automatically updated based on HR or Directory attributes. With Group Requester, organizations have a critical group management software element in place for a strong overall identity and access governance initiative.
Avatier on the Road
Avatier made its present known at a pair of industry conferences this year. In September, Avatier participated in CSO Magazine’s The Security Standard 2012 conference, held in New York City. It was Avatier’s attendance at the Gartner IAM Summit in December, though, where the company made its biggest splash.
While Avatier may not have been exactly a household name going into the conference, it certainly did its part to spread the message about the innovative ways the company is taking on IT Cyber Security, User Provisioning, Password Management, Compliance Governance and Enterprise Risk Management.
Avatier CEO Nelson Cicchitto got things started with the keynote address for Day 1, followed by a presentation titled, “Leveraging Today’s Megatrends to Drive the Future of Identity Management,” which featured a presentation from one of Avatier’s health care customers who put changes in the Identity Management space into perspective with stories from his experiences on the job.
In addition to the presentations, Avatier’s booth was hopping throughout the show with demos taking place constantly throughout our time on the floor. On Day 1, company representatives were still entertaining interested summit attendees until they shut down the hall at 8 p.m. The second day was equally busy with demos throughout the day and probably could have gone just as late the second day had it not been for the company’s after-hours tailgate party, which proved to be a huge success and was attended by more than 270 people.
Looking Ahead
Avatier closed out the year by offering up a taste of the future when it introduced its “next generation” IAM solution, Identity and Access Management Holistic Definition (IAM HD). This innovative approach to identity management is a business-driven methodology that offers a clearer, broader vision of IAM that encompasses all aspects of assignment management for the entire organization.
Noting that, “The time has to come to redefine IAM to keep up with evolving technology advancements, expanding IT eco-systems, and new business-focused customer demands,” Cicchitto offered a preview of IAM HD in his presentation at the Gartner IAM Summit. In his outline of IAM HD, he presented the advanced technology as the next step in the evolution of identity and access management. He explained that the approach taken by IAM HD can have a dramatic influence in protecting brands, guarding data and increasing business productivity, while streamlining IT department processes.
The innovation behind IAM HD will have a profound impact on the future of the identity management market because organizations have come to realize that success hinges on allowing the right stakeholders to decide who gets access to what, when, how and why. IAM HD will provide all the features of requesting, approving, tracking and granting assignments, not only for accessing applications, but also for access to all corporate assets such as systems, facilities and equipment. Rather than buying point solutions to handle this problem as companies do today, IAM HD avoids this fragmentation and puts everything into one holistic solution.
With all of these successes in 2012, Avatier moves into 2013 with a great deal of momentum. That momentum should translate into continued innovation and success as the company builds upon 2012 and its “days of old lang syne.”
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