Who does Salesforce.com think you are?
- Summary:
- We've had cloud wars and database wars and ERP wars. Now step forward, single sign-on wars as Salesforce.com steps into the fray with Identity.
The basic idea behind this is obvious enough and serves a genuine need: removing user frustration at each application they use - Salesforce, Workday, G-mail, for example - requiring a different set of login credentials.
Salesforce Identity is designed to remove this first world problem by providing a single set of user credentials that can be used for all kinds of apps that interact with Salesforce, and provide administrators with one control panel to set usage and sign-in policies. Firms can enforce multi-factor authentication on key applications to add security if they're minded so to do.
It can be used in conjunction with existing login services used by firms, such as Microsoft Active Directory.
(Users who want to integrate Identity with the Microsoft offering - or other directories - face paying an additional $1 a month on top of the $5 per user price BTW.)
Chatter can also be integrated so users can collaborate across products while single sign-on integration with Facebook, Google, Amazon and PayPal means external users can be invited to access apps without needing a Salesforce account.
In the mix is open source software from ForgeRock, signed up as a development partner by Salesforce.com for access to its Identity Stack offering.
Above and beyond?
According to Andy Kellett, principal analyst at Ovum, the firm has gone above and beyond what it needed to do here by not applying its identity management push only to cloud applications:
“The approach that Salesforce has taken will be seen as disruptive to the identity management sector. Most existing platform vendors are categorized as performing within the enterprise space and looking out towards the cloud for future opportunities. Previous new entrants during the last two years have joined the IAM sector as cloud only specialists.
They want to provide simple to use and cost effective solutions without taking on the overheads of enterprise environments. The cloud versus enterprise divide to IAM was never a comfortable situation, but had become quite clear cut. Now Saleforce.com with its new release has changed all that with an approach that breaks the mould.”
Overall it's a logical move by Salesforce.com, but one that will put pressure on start-ups in this market, such as Okta and Ping, who already face competition from Microsoft's offering Azure Active Directory capabilities for free.
But as we've seen elsewhere, as Salesforce.com inevitably expands its own footprint, those who might once have been regarded as partners to fill functional gaps increasingly face up to the prospect of that infamous industry category: co-opetition.
Disclosure: at time of writing Salesforce.com and Workday are premium partners of diginomica.