Welcome to the KuppingerCole Analyst Chat. I'm your host. My name is Matthias Reinwarth, I'm the director of the Practice Identity and Access Management here at KuppingerCole Analysts. My guest today is for long time again Christopher Schütze. He's the director of the Practice of Cyber Security here at KuppingerCole Analysts. Hi, Christopher. Good to have you.
Hi, Matthias.
Today, we want to have kind of a special episode. We want to talk a bit more about how our audience, but also how everybody, can get access to the services that KuppingerCole as an analyst company and as an advisory company can provide to everybody who's interested in that. And if you think back of some of the episodes that we did recently, I talked to our analyst colleagues that talked about their Leadership Compasses. So the research documents that we do. So these research documents, they represent a status of the current research because they have a publishing date and then we talk about the most recent developments, the newest products, the trends. And of course, we also transfer knowledge that we gained during our research and our advisory into podcast episodes. Like Martin, who talked last week about the difficulties that you might have when adding an IGA just to an on-premises AD. But there are other ways to get to KuppingerCole Analysts know-how, to leverage that for yourself, some are for free, and maybe Christopher, you can quickly highlight KC Open Select. We had talked about that before. But this is an online service, right?
Yeah. So KC Open Select is a really cool online service. You mainly have the capabilities to filter and select for specific highlighted topics, like the Leadership Compasses you mentioned, and compare specific products on specific attributes that are relevant for you. And this is really a good starting point to get the first feeling about a specific market segment of potential tools that could help you to solve your issues within your organization.
Right, so kind of an online version of that part of a tools choice that gets you to a long list and maybe to some kind of shortlist, which are the products you should focus on when it comes to creating actual solutions.
Exactly.
But today we want we are here to talk about some new offering that we want to add to our advisory services. So this is kind of a shameless self plug here today, but I think that is of importance to also to let people know there is a simple entry level advisory service that really provides value. And that's the Strategy Navigator. What's behind that?
Yeah. I think the idea of the Strategy Navigator is something that came up between the two of us and some others, mainly because we heard from our customers that they need strategic advice, but also need a first feeling within your organization, What is the right approach? So as you mentioned, we have, for instance, the Tools Choice. We have the Open Select part where you specifically know what or which kind of problem you want to solve. But sometimes or very often you also need one step before. So what is the right strategy? What is the right way to invest in some specific tools? And that's basically the idea behind the Strategy Navigator. We want to help organizations on a very focused way with not [much] effort needed from customer side to identify it. The right strategy with really lean workshops, kickoff meetings and really tailored and target driven results in the direction of where to invest first, what to solve first, whether it's maybe an IGA solution, maybe it's a specific general target operating model or something in the direction of a Zero Trust strategy. And I mean, even Zero Trust is a very broad topic where it's not 100% clear, or there is no 100% blueprint for any organization. And also every organization has an other level here and another expectation. And that's basically the idea behind that.
Absolutely. And I think that is really of importance, making the right steps for improving an existing infrastructure, for adding new capabilities to your landscape of services and how to justify that, to find the right partners in crime within your own organization. That often needs support that can be easily achieved but needs some external spark to really find the way how that actually fits into your own organization, or how an organization can really create their own solutions. So we are transferring best practices and our research knowledge towards the organizations, as you said in the lean workshops, but also with documents that represent the results of these workshops and the research part. So it's the knowledge of peers, the knowledge of the market, the knowledge of us as advisors and analysts that is combined to help you taking the next reasonable and practical and tangible steps towards defining and implementing a strategy. So the term Strategy Navigator is not that bad, I assume. Right?
Yeah, and I remember when we talked about finding the right name for that product, but it really fits. And I think the most interesting part for organizations is, and that's what you and I and our customers know is the biggest challenge, what do I need around cybersecurity? What do I need about identity and access management? And that's our approach here as well. We have our fabric concept, no matter whether it's identity and acess management or cyber[security], and we use this to really break down for a specific organization what is needed. And I really love this kind of workshops discussing with the stakeholders from companies, What is important, what not. I think we already did some podcasts about these topics, but it's really very interesting and great to help organizations here to find the right way, to find the right path, and to have a starting point of how to improve an organization’s cybersecurity or identity and access management program or strategy, however you call it, and in which level it is defined.
Right. And if you really want to have our experts onsite in your organization, or remotely for such a set of workshops and getting to tailored results for your organization to take the next steps, then the Strategy Navigator is really the best way to move forward. And of course, as I said, it's a shameless self plug. It is. It's affordable, it's compact, it delivers defined results, and we agree upon results with our customers beforehand so that everyone is clear what they will receive afterwards, and that there is a clear expectation well managed. So that would be really something that we, this time, want to recommend apart from the free services that we provide, so the blog posts, the KC Open Select service, which is free for you to choose a solution, but if you want to get to a next level strategy in the areas of cybersecurity and or identity and access management, then that might be the right way to start. How to do that? Get in touch with Christopher, get in touch with me and if you have something to write, get in touch with Michael Neumayr, he will hate that I will mention him in this podcast episode, but he's the right person to talk to and to lead you towards this Strategy Navigator on how to implement that for your organization. So if you have questions as usual, please leave them in the comments below this video or reach out to us via our email addresses, they are all around the KuppingerCole website, easy to find and if there's any feedback, if there are any recommendations which topics should be covered in such a Strategy Navigator, let us know. We are happy to cover these topics. We don't give specific topics because we think these are so different and various and manifold. So just reach out with your individual challenges and we will discuss them with you in such a workshop set and with proper recommendations. Final sentence to add from your side, Christopher?
No, just adding that I or specifically we are happy to support you in building up a roadmap and maybe even help to implement it in the next steps. That's it from my end.
Absolutely. And this, I apologize for this episode being a bit different, but we really wanted to get out that message. Next time it's back to cybersecurity, identity and access management topics. Back to details, facts and trends. But this time we wanted to make sure that this message is well heard. Thank you very much for your time for listening in. Reach out to us if you want to. Leave your feedback and looking forward to seeing you in one of the next episodes, Christopher, and for the audience to having you back again next week when we talk about real tangible topics. Thanks again and bye bye.
