Identity Management in a Box
AegisUSA Appliance Uses Sun Technology to Bring "IAM" to the Masses"From the outset," says Ralph Armijo, CEO of Sun Identity Management Specialty partner AegisUSA, headquartered just outside Denver, Colorado, "we've focused on being the premier identity solutions provider, helping our clients understand identity management [IdM]. Traditionally," Armijo explains, "identity access management [IAM] projects have been complex, lengthy, and expensive. But now, AegisUSA has leveraged best practices and lessons learned from our large deployments, including more than 60 implementations, to provide an appliance-based solution that starts at $50,000 at the low end."
“Sun's Identity Management Specialty [defines] a high level of competency for qualifying partners. By selecting an accredited partner, customers can be confident they have chosen a qualified organization for their IdM infrastructure.”
— Ralph Armijo, CEO
AegisUSA More of the same? Not hardly."Our new Aegis Identity Appliance point solution offerings will revolutionize how identity management can be adopted by mainstream companies that have previously been unable to afford badly needed IAM solutions," Armijo says. Until now, Armijo admits that IAM solutions were mostly the province of large enterprises with deep pockets. "But those days are over," says Aegis Business Development Manager Janet Yarbrough. The announcement by AegisUSA of its new Identity Appliance solution points to "a revolutionary approach to rapid IAM deployment as well as simplified management and maintenance — the likes of which midsized and even large-scale operations have never seen." "Our new Identity Appliance," says CEO Armijo, "is an affordable, easy-to-own, hardware-based solution that "brings identity management to the masses" — to people who had the need all along, but who just couldn't afford the solution. That's the real news." IAM — the day before yesterdayIn fact, says Armijo, the need for affordable, enterprise-class IAM solutions has never been greater. Organizations need to provide secure administration, authentication, authorization, auditing, and management of online digital identities for themselves, so they can:
But, until now, "large, custom IAM solutions — complex and expensive ones — were the order of the day. Implementations starting at $500,000 and greater, sometimes occurring in multiple phases, were standard fare for large enterprises and government agencies," Armijo says. And what about time to completion? "Six months to a year has been typical before any results were realized," he says. Aegis Identity Appliance heralds a new day in IAMThe Aegis Identity Appliance is a "shrink-wrapped" hardware-based solution incorporating core Sun IdM technology, integrated with Aegis intellectual property, best practices, methodologies, and architecture. The result? A simple-to-manage IAM appliance that is a combination of tested Sun-Aegis technology and five years worth of Aegis field experience engaging in scores of large-scale implementations. Armijo emphasizes that the Identity Appliance solution "is available at a price point that was unachievable prior to today." Moreover, he says, "the Aegis Identity Appliance reduces the time to production to just 30 days from delivery. Historically, this would have taken between three to six months to accomplish." What do you get?Today, there are up to four identity solutions available for the Aegis Identity Appliance:
Organizations can "start slowly" with one identity solution, such as password management, then scale their infrastructures as their needs and budgets permit, says Armijo. "All the software is built in. All the functionality comes in a single, simple-to-manage appliance. Bottom line, it's cost-effective. It's fast. It requires fewer resources to support. And, with the ROI numbers and time to market, it's an easier financial decision for customers to make." The best technology: together...The Aegis Identity Appliance is built atop the entire Sun Identity Management suite, including Sun Identity Manager and Sun OpenSSO Enterprise, "providing customers with a production-ready IAM solution without many of the traditional deployment issues," says AegisUSA Principal Consultant Chad Rabideau. "Aegis has incorporated our industry experience, the most sought-after IAM features, and a production-ready hardware/software platform to deliver IAM solutions in an appliance form factor." The Aegis Identity Appliance, Rabideau explains, "is built on dual Sun Fire X4150 servers and infrastructure software including the Sun Identity Suite, Solaris OS, MySQL database, and Sun GlassFish application server — all tuned for optimum performance." Sun Partner Advantage: Specialties"Since we founded the company in 2004," says Aegis CEO Armijo, "we have developed significant IdM domain knowledge, intellectual property, and vertical market expertise." All the while, the Sun Identity Management Specialty partner has kept a single-minded focus on combining proven Sun technologies and training with time- and lab-tested AegisUSA software and methodologies. One of the essential elements of the partner's success with its customers has been its participation in the Sun Partner Advantage Program Specialties, which offers a comprehensive certification and apprenticeship process that ensures that Specialties accredited partners can deliver predictable results that help improve customer success. Sun Partner Advantage Program Specialties partners get access to knowledge and technical training in core technologies — including Identity Management (as in the case of AegisUSA), SOA, Open Storage, xVM Ops Center, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, MySQL and GlassFish (with more Specialties to come) — and service deployment tools that enable them to develop expertise in delivering services-rich solutions. "Sun's Identity Management Specialty," says Armijo, "is a critical element of defining a high level of competency for qualifying partners. It allows partners to differentiate themselves based on measured criteria. By selecting an accredited partner, customers can be confident they have chosen a qualified organization for the implementation of their identity management infrastructure." What's next?"For most partners and resellers, there's a lot of heavy lifting involved in selling and supporting IAM solutions. It is our goal to get an easy-to-manage solution available to a wider audience of customers — via other Sun resellers. So, how do we do that?" Armijo asks rhetorically. Yarbrough completes the thought: "In fact, we've created multiple channel models taking into consideration the type of Sun partners that may have interest in the Identity Appliance, their various levels of expertise, and how we can work with them, along with Sun and Avnet, to bring this new, simpler, more affordable solution to the broadest market possible. The goal is mutual benefit for all parties involved." Want to know more?Get more information on AegisUSA and its IdM Appliance and services, and the Sun Identity Management Suite:
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