Quest is providing more and more tools in the Identity Management space. That is no surprise, given the fact that Jackson Shaw is Senior Product Manager at Quest. Jackson Shaw has been at Zoomit and Microsoft before, thus being one of the “inventors” of Microsoft’s MIIS.
During March 2008 Quest has not only announced a more and more complete portfolio of Identity Management tools, all positioned around the Windows platform. Quest has also announced the acquisition of one Single Sign-On solution with PassGo and a partnership with another Single Sign-On vendor, namely Evidian. The Evidian product will be called Quest Enterprise Single Sign-On.
Thus, Quest has no a pretty broad portfolio of SSO-Solutions, with PassGo acting more at the level of local SSO solutions and Evidian providing a true Enterprise SSO solution.
With the acquisition and the partnership, Quest has become a relevant player in the growing market for SSO solutions, which is an entry point into the overall Identity Management market as well. Many companies make their move into IAM with SSO projects to address current issues their users have with handling too many credentials. Thus, having a strong offering in this space improves the overall competitiveness in the IAM market. That’s, by the way, one of the reasons why IBM has acquired Encentuate in March 2008.
With other tools in the areas of cross-platform Kerberos management, directory administration and auditing, Quest is not a full service IAM vendor right now but can offer more and more pieces of the puzzle. In the specific segment of vendors which add value to the Windows platform and the Active Directory, we rate Quest amongst the leading vendor.
For medium sized business with a strong Active Directory infrastructure, Quest might even become the supplier which enhances the Microsoft platform in a way that enables the fulfillment of at least most of the IAM and GRC requirements these companies are facing today. And I’m convinced that Quest will provide additional solutions to further improve its positioning in the IAM market.