EIC Speaker Spotlight: Jackson Shaw

I think what I'm trying to basically say is that what we've seen over the last 10 years is an explosion of SAS applications that cover all kinds of, you know, different use cases. I mean, you know, every company out there is using many, many, many different SAS applications and in the identity space, that includes many things like governance includes, you know, lifecycle management. It includes privilege, account management, web access, all kinds of different things. But what I've been seeing over the last couple of years is, is this whole dynamo of digital transformation.

And we're seeing companies that are doing their digital transformation, but they're not doing digital transformation with identity as the centerpiece, they're doing digital transformation with some sort of a platform as the centerpiece. And it's through that platform that we see things growing like governance, life cycle management, provisioning, and many of the other core identity capabilities that are being built into these platforms.

So my supposition, I guess where my theory is that eventually we're going to see more and more of these capabilities in these platforms, which I believe is going to make for a very interesting marketplace where customers are going to be choosing between platform based solutions that they're using for their digital transformation versus standalone identity solutions. Like they've, they've used it up till now. You know, first of all, it's not just service. Now you can see where this is starting to happen in other platforms like at Lacien where they've started to add some of these capabilities.

You see it even in, in, in Salesforce, you see it with the Okta acquisition of auth zero and building more and more identity into theirs. And the stated, you know, future from Todd McKinnon, the CEO of Okta is he wants to be a platform.

So I it's nascent, and this is not something that's going to happen overnight, but you can definitely see where things, you know, in the service now case where, for example, GRC is being added to service now where security operations is being added to service now where there's a lot of these capabilities that typically have been more identity focused and more separate. So I just think that you'll see over the next five to 10 years, where a lot more of the traditional capabilities that are are in identity will start bleeding into these platforms.

And then customers will be making a choice on what they to use. And I think the biggest factor here is that for digital transformation, customers are picking these platforms as the centerpiece for their digital transformation. The identity piece is a supporting player, so to speak, but it's not, it's not the main course on the menu. So I think the, the, the problem that we're going to see between the tension between the platforms and the identity products is that the money is going to be spent on the platforms.

The strategic direction of a company is going to be on the platform and the identity products that a company has, they're going to have to fight to maintain their relevance within that sort of transformation as it occurs. I think what we've seen again, if we look kind of a little bit, historically, we've seen identity vendors start back in my day, doing email address synchronization. We've seen them do directory, synchronization, lifecycle management.

And then when we started seeing the identity vendors start acquiring other companies, when I was at quest, for example, we acquired 12 different companies to build our identity portfolio. So you've seen all of these acquisitions occur with the intent of the identity vendor to build a suite of tools or in some ways, a platform with the platform being built for digital transformation, whether it's service now or at Lacien, or, or, you know, Microsoft Azure or any of the other products that are out there, or even Okta's intentions.

What we're going to see is more and more of those capabilities become part of the platform, an easier and easier choice for a customer to say, I don't need to buy a specialized tool from a company that I don't really know. And isn't part of my overall strategy. I'm going to go with my platform. And I think what we'll see is the pendulum shift from the identity players with a whole bunch of different products and different tools back to where identity products are perhaps more niche-y.

So let's say five to 10 years, we're going to have a lot of specialized, very purpose built identity products instead of these broad suites and a lot of the general capabilities for identity that people are buying today, either as part of a suite or just general purpose now inside the platform. And, you know, if you, again, you know, I don't know if I'm lucky or unlucky, but I've seen this from, you know, over the last 30 years basically.

And I was thinking about this the other day of all the organizations I knew before the revolution happened that are no longer here, like ISOCORE and world talk and critical path and a soft switch. I mean, there's a whole bunch of these vendors that are no longer with us for various different reasons, but certainly SAS being one of them or the, the evolution of SAS.

So I think what we'll see is like, if you, if you think of some of these companies and I'll, you know, I'll, I'll take a, you know, one of my previous companies who acquire a whole bunch of companies and they've built a platform they've had, or they've built a set of products that are on-prem, they've built a SAS platform. And now they're trying to manage all of these things while I believe this platform, you know, is going to, while digital transformation is going to evolve these platforms to start eating into their lunch.

I believe that there's going to be a number of vendors and especially the bigger vendors in this space today that are going to suffer the consequences of not being ready for this movement towards the platform. And the digital transformation that's occurring in companies will, will, will everybody disappear?

Well, of course not.

I mean, there were a lot of companies that, that were back in the nineties that are still with us, but I think there there's going to be another one of these tectonic shifts, or maybe it's not a tectonic shift, but certainly a change in the marketplace over the next, the next five to 10 I mean, when you, when, when you think of it, the message I would want the CEOs and the other people in the audience to take from this is that a number of these platforms are starting to provide significant value outside of a vendor, like, like us who have built on one of these platforms, but just in themselves.

If I look at, we take service now, cause we talked about service now, as an example, it has a piece of it's software called integration hub integration hub is 100% about integrating with other directories and systems. They connect to over 250 different systems. Why wouldn't a CIO want to use that because, well, in fact, they're already using it for things like Microsoft teams and all kinds of other things internally. Why wouldn't they also want to use that for identity if the capability is there, which it is.

So what I, what I want folks to take away from this presentation is that there is a rise happening with these platform vendors. And there will be a slow decline in my view of many of the identity vendors. And if your digital transformation, your company's future, your customer experience, your employee experience, your partner experience is being focused on one of these platforms. You need to think about how identity can be a part of that digital transformation instead of sitting to the side where it is now.

I mean, that's, that's an excellent question. And I mean, I almost want to flip it around in a way and say, is it what's more appropriate for a company? Is it to be making a, a further bet doubling down, you know, to use a gambling term on the platform that they're using, that they're betting their whole company on, right. Versus an independent player that might not be here tomorrow or the next day.

I mean, when you look at the magnitude of the difference between, let's say the market cap of an Octa versus a service now or an at Lacien versus one of the other companies, we're talking about a order of magnitude the same around Microsoft and, and their capabilities. So I think that there's more staying power. So to speak more capability for those companies to continue to expand and buy into identity, then staying with the particular platform.

I mean, you know, you could just imagine it, for example, Okta, which just made a huge acquisition of all zero Okta isn't immune itself from being acquired, right. It could be acquired by a Salesforce or a service now, or even a Microsoft. They have the capability and the depth. And that's my point. I think the platform players have more capability in depth and longterm ability to do acquisitions and build more technology into their products.