Company + Product

Since its introduction with Windows Server 2008, Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0 has been Microsoft’s answer to extending enterprise identity beyond the firewall. However, building an identity management solution with the AD FS toolkit has many hidden costs. While AD FS solves some identity challenges for Microsoft’s product…

RSA can be intimidating for first-time attendees – and this year’s event was no different. Walking the exhibit floor (all 700,000 square feet of it) is nearly a full-day experience on its own. And when you consider the bright oversized logos and crowded aisles, loud conversations, booth crawls and tchotchkes galore, it can be overwhelming for the…

Building and maintaining Okta’s security program is an interesting job, to say the least. The stakes are high: Not only is identity management core to IT, it is central to an enterprise’s security. Plus, Okta delivers IDM from the cloud, so between mobile devices, third-party partners and the inherent security concerns associated with user habits,…

Are ex-entrepreneurs best equipped to succeed as venture capitalists? That’s the topic of the week over at the Wall Street Journal’s ‘Accelerators’ blog, and I weigh in: When Investing in CEOs, It Takes One to Know One. Successful VCs come in all shades but, in my mind, those who have started their own companies have a little something extra in…

“What’s your disaster recovery plan?” It’s a question I’ve been getting from customers quite a bit lately. And it caught me off guard the first time I heard it. Typically, inquiries on disaster recovery come from someone on an audit team who has the daunting task of creating a disaster recovery and business continuity plan across the entire…

Earlier today, we announced the close of a $25 million round in series C financing led by Sequoia Capital. We’re very lucky to add the Sequoia team to our list of amazing investors – which already includes Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Greylock Partners, and FLOODGATE. The details are highlighted in the press release, but I’d like to share…

As we approach the close of the fourth quarter, many of you will be evaluating the investments your company has made in the way of cloud computing and will consequently consider how to maximize these investments. Ray Wang and the Constellation Research team have jump-started the process for you with a new tool, “The Enterprise Cloud Buyer’s Bill…

During the past few weeks, I’ve written about what it takes to build a cloud service that’s ready for the enterprise. Essentially, there are three characteristics that set true enterprise cloud services apart from their consumer counterparts: Security. Reliability. Trust. When evaluating an enterprise cloud service for those characteristics, there…

Verification has been making the news lately. Earlier this month, Box announced that it was adding a two-step login verification, just weeks after Dropbox added two-step verification. And it was Wired journalist Mat Honan’s devastating personal identity hack in August that inspired my blog series on what it takes to build secure cloud services for…

Last week, I posted the fourth installment in a six-part blog series about what it takes to have an enterprise-ready cloud service and the three characteristics (security, reliability and trust) that differentiate an enterprise cloud service from a typical consumer cloud service. In this series, I’ve discussed five aspects to look at when…