Interview: The 8KMiles Acquisition Of FuGen Solutions
8K Miles recently acquired FuGen solutions for $7.5 Million. The move signifies 8K Miles focus and interest in expanding into the Cloud IAM (Identity Access Management) and Identity federation brokerage services. What’s evident from the acquisition is the rising demand for simplified identity and access management on the Cloud, especially in hybrid cloud deployment scenarios. I interviewed Suresh Venkatachari, who is the Chairman and CEO of 8K Miles about the Cloud landscape and also about the acquisition.
Q. Tell us a bit about yourself and 8KMiles and its acquisition of FuGen?
I have an engineering background and bring over 24 years of management experience in the software product and consulting industry to 8KMiles. In the last 14 years I’ve had a strong entrepreneurial focus and founded 4 companies—successfully taking one public while selling two others. Prior to this, I headed the electronic banking software development at Deutsche Bank, Singapore.
8KMiles is a leading global, end-to-end cloud solutions provider and Amazon Web Services Premier Consulting Partner. The company is focused on delivering value-added cloud solutions designed to provide enterprise-level cloud security, mobile collaboration and large-scale data analytics for enterprise, SMBs, Government and managed service providers.
8KMiles has deep expertise in secure cloud solutions, meeting important security qualifications such as FISMA in verticals such as government and more. The acquisition of FuGen Solutions will further enhance 8KMiles’ security services platform in the cloud, while offering innovative, complementary security measures such as Identity and Access Management to help streamline authentication across multiple cloud-based business systems. By incorporating and expanding on FuGen’s intellectual property for its enterprise Cloud Identity Broker, 8KMiles will be better poised to meet the growing security and compliance needs of large enterprises and government agencies.
Q. Describe how 8KMiles is adding value to the Cloud eco-system?
We recently received the honor of being selected as an Amazon Web Services Premier Consulting Partner, a designation given to only 15 cloud integrators in the industry. We’re very proud of this.
We have over five years of experience in building cloud solutions. Our team of cloud experts and enterprise-level cloud architecture is robust yet tailored in its approach to help companies power their cloud and go-to-market strategies, while achieving greater cloud computing savings and efficiencies. Our customers benefit greatly from our enhanced security services offered through our cloud platform, while being able to take advantage of more innovative, complementary security measures such as Identity and Access Management to help them better manage and streamline authentication as they increasingly migrate other business systems into the cloud. We pride ourselves in being able to help large enterprises and government agencies to meet growing security and compliance needs.
Q. In simple terms, how do you describe Federated Identity Management on the Cloud?
User identities authenticated by an authentication provider or identity provider other than a company’s identity management system, are said to be federated.
If an identity management system is hosted on the Cloud, identities are said to be managed using Federated Identity Management on the Cloud.
•If enterprise users can reuse their existing corporate credentials to access SaaS applications in the cloud without signing in again, then those users are also considered federated.
Government or Large Enterprises can also rely on a cloud identity broker or gateway as the federated identity management in the cloud to allow users to seamlessly access other cloud applications with their own credentials (BYOD) or with multiple types of credentials at different assurance levels.
Q. Do you see increased adoption of SSO within the enterprise Cloud space in near future?
Yes. Enterprise users will access an increasing number of resources or SaaS applications hosted on the Cloud (public, private or hybrid) and prefer using their credentials once to login, which would be the primary motivation for SSO adoption on the Cloud. On the consumer side, Financial, Ecommerce and Insurance applications, and Government Online Citizen services will see an uptake in adoption of federated access and streamlined authentication across sites.
Q. Tell us about the on-going pilot program of FuGen with some of the Fortune 500 companies?
In FuGen’s SaaS Onboarding and Certification for CA’s Cloud SSO Readiness Program, FuGen’s has onboarded and certified 50 plus SaaS partners of CA from a private cloud environment, helping many Fortune500 customers of CA to integrate with various cloud applications.
Q. hybrid cloud deployments and federated SSO – perfect match?
Hybrid cloud deployments for enterprises usually have federated identities with or without SSO enabled. SSO enablement is usually preferred functionality for ease of access for users. Federated SSO reduces the complexity of handling password management related issues by providing improved convenience for enterprise users with streamlined authentication for Hybrid cloud deployments.
Q. How does FuGen’s IAM and SSO solutions address security concerns?
FuGen’s IAM solution precludes access to external resources or cloud applications for unauthenticated and unauthorized users. FuGen’s IAM solution with SSO prompts for re- authentication credentials if credentials are revoked or if access mechanisms are compromised. Specifically, FuGen’s cloud identity broker helps to address the following:
• Rapidly onboard and operationally certify SSO partners or cloud applications in real-time for federation compliance and security requirements
• Reduces the SSO and cross domain IAM deployment risks with respect to security, compliance and auditing
• Provide continuous monitoring and reporting capabilities for Federated IDM and SSO
• Minimizes the SSO partner friction and setup time
• Helps big enterprises to manage identity access for SMB partners and minimizes the weakest link problem
• Helps to manage Relying Parties federation policies and ensure compliance with Authentication providers
• Ensures the establishment of federated IAM trust framework from the start
• Continuous or ongoing management of federated connections for achieving the best Federation QoS (Quality of Service) for large deployments
By Salman Ul Haq
Disclaimer: This interview was conducted by Salman Ul Haq on behalf of CloudTweaks.
