Effective Solutions at Cost-Effective PricesOpenIAM – Identity and Access Management – is a platform that offers solutions for improved security at lesser operational costs and improved end-user productivity, says Bibhuti Kumar Jha, Country Manager – India, Middle East, Singapore and Israel, OpenIAM LLC, in an interaction with Elets News Network (ENN)
Tell us about openIAM and the products and services that the company offers.
OpenIAM was started in 2008 in the United States. We felt that the Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions available at that time were very complex, having higher licence costs and quite expensive to deploy. The use of these solutions became completely impractical for most mid-sized organisations and several other organisations in the emerging markets. We started OpenIAM because we felt that we could deliver a comprehensive solution that was significantly easier to use at a much more attractive prices.
How do you think OpenIAM is relevant to India and has an edge over its rivals?
The market in India is changing and an increasing number of companies are demanding IAM solutions. These companies are looking for cost-effective solutions that could integrate both in-house and cloud systems. They also want capabilities such as One Time Password (OTP) and Access Governance. This type of functionality from the large vendors is often cost prohibitive and the products from new players in the market lack depth and maturity. But OpenIAM offers a comprehensive solution at much less total cost of ownership.
Which segments in India does the company cater to?
OpenIAM solutions are used in a wide range of industries, and are not confined to a particular vertical. However, we have seen comparatively larger scale of adoption of our products in the sectors like the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), Manufacturing, Telco and Healthcare.
Data and information security is a huge concern these days. How does the company address the issue?
We offer quite a few functionalities to manage information security concerns. These include:
- Managing the user lifecycle, where we can interface with a company’s HR Systems and create users when they join a company and remove them the day they leave. This type of de-provisioning allows companies to ensure that there are no doors open for former employees to access the network
- Embedded strong authentication.
- Access to review and certification, which allows managers to review the access that someone has at any moment in time. We can also detect when a user in a particular type of job has more access than other people in their job.
- Single sign-on, which improves the user experience, and also eliminates the need for users to remember multiple accounts and passwords.
These tools help manage access to IT resources. Later this year, we will be adding additional tools to further protect critical systems within an organisation.
How do you intend to increase your presence in an emerging market like India?
India is an important market for us. We have already started to build our sales and support infrastructure here. We will expand it to include product-engineering resources as well. The business development team has already started to create a partner network that consists of regional partners as well as global integrators, with whom we have large deployments. All of these activities are helping us develop a presence in India that will reach a wide range of customers.