IAM newbie chases Google Apps and Salesforce partners

OneLogin claims its technology is a good base point from which resellers can build a cloud business

Cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) vendor OneLogin is on a mission to make resellers relevant to the cloud era after touching down in the UK.

Founded in 2010, US-based OneLogin has 650 customers worldwide – including UK clients such as News Corp and Reed Recruitment – and has taken on channel veteran Dan Power to help build up its business on this side of the pond.

Talking to CRN, OneLogin chief executive Thomas Pederson said the need for IAM is on the rise as more data moves into the cloud and is therefore not protected by a firewall.

"People can go straight to Salesforce, Box or Google Apps and sign in, and IT has no visibility of that," he said.

"Once they put our product in place, they can centralise access control, enforce strong authentication and have an audit trail of all the cloud activity that goes on. We are a true cloud application – you can get us enabled in a matter of minutes."

OneLogin will be channel focused in the UK and Pederson said partners should have a degree of understanding of the cloud, perhaps specialising in cloud applications such as Google Apps, Salesforce, Netsuite, Workday or ServiceNow.

But Power, who has previously worked for Dell KACE and Landesk, suggested that OneLogin's technology could also provide a foot in the door for resellers that have so far found themselves out in the cold on cloud.

"As a reseller, you may find that your customers already have Dropbox, Zendesk or Salesforce – or whatever – but you've been cut out of the loop," he said.

"What you can do now is come back in and help your customer implement best practice with regards to the provisioning and deprovisioning of applications and so forth. Our technology helps IT maintain control over those applications."

According to IDC, the identity management as a service market will account for 25 per cent of all new IAM sales by the end of 2014, up from five per cent in 2012.

"There are only a few players that focus exclusively on web and we are one of them," said Pederson, who namechecked Ping Identity and Symplified as competitors.

David McLeman, managing director at Google Apps partner Ancoris, said Google Apps for Business already offers automated provisioning from Active Directory, as well as authentication and two-factor enforcement, limiting the need for any external single sign-on solution.

But he added: "The OneLogin proposition does become more relevant as customers embrace cloud applications more widely and wish to have a single source of authentication and control for all their SaaS applications.