Covisint, owned by Compuware, began with a $500 million investment in 2000 (now there’s some confidence in an idea), and now has some 3,000 customers and 18 million users.
But Covisint doesn’t want to hog all the credit. It wants resellers to share as well, through a new white-label program for the Covisint Identity Services (CIS).
Included in the program are sales training, a partner portal, support, efficient registration for deals and market help.
Identity management, particularly in the cloud, is a red hot area. First, with more and more apps spread across the premises and the cloud, IT is struggling to manage access and user rights.
And the cloud itself offers particular challenges.
On-premises, when an employee leaves, IT can easily erase his or her data, but the same isn’t always true in the cloud. If the cloud provider fails to delete this information, it doesn’t much matter if IT, through a cloud service, can shut off access.
This is a compelling business case for MSPs and other partners to make.
The Covisint Partner Program targets the following:
- System integrators specializing in hybrid cloud;
- On-premises and mobile infrastructures;
- Managed service providers (telecom, hosting);
- Value-added resellers;
- Resellers and original equipment manufacturers where identity management is a key value proposition; and
- Those offering enterprise software/hardware solutions, including multi-factor authentication, mobile device management and security incident and event management.”
Identity services are part of a larger system. “Covisint's platform delivers three core requirements as-a-service for business advantage today: security, integration and presentation,” argued David McGuffie, Covisint president and CEO. “We strategically designed the Covisint Partner Program to enable companies seeking aggressive growth to generate more revenue through our proven cloud identity services and portal solutions.”
The company was founded to go after the identity and access management (IAM) market.
Last year, Forrester looked at six vendors in “The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM), Q3 2012” report. Covisint was a leader, along with Okta and Symplified (though the spelling of this company’s name is anything but simple).
“Covisint is the granddaddy of all cloud IAM services. Starting out as Covisint’s Trusted Broker Network to provide IAM for the automotive industry, Covisint offers its own IP in a services offering. The company has successfully expanded into other verticals such as healthcare, energy, and travel,” Forrester wrote. “Of all companies included in this Forrester Wave, Covisint has been in the market the longest (more than 10 years), has repeatable services, and offers a federation protocol converter. It is the strongest player in identity management and attestation, has extensive strong authentication capabilities, and provides consumer identity management for all OnStar customers as part of the OnStar Connected Vehicle Platform.”
Covisint was also a sponsor of TMC’s recent Cloud Identity Summit.
Edited by
Alisen Downey
