A few weeks ago, James Litton and I touched down in Munich to speak at Kuppingercole's European Identity & Cloud Conference 2015, where we also had the pleasure of speaking with innovation leaders shaping the future of IT. I wanted to share some of my thoughts and observations from the event:
- Identity is the new perimeter. We used to think firewalls protected our data. But as data becomes more exposed, it is imperative for organizations to protect it using identity management. Organizations need to start handling internal identities (employees, student, etc) and external identities (consumers, partners, guardians) in a consistent and cohesive manner.
- On the cloud or on-premises. As a software vendor, not only should we focus strictly on helping our customers move to the cloud, but rather on providing our products consistently in the cloud or on-premises. Like most things, IT is cyclical. There’s been a moveable shift from centralization to de-centralization, and back to centralization and decentralization again. At some point, the cost and complexity of building your own cloud will bring organizations that moved to a cloud infrastructure back to “on-premises.” Physical on-premises could be anywhere, but can be privately managed by the organization.
- Think about the user experience. Within 5 years, it's predicted that the use of mobile and tablet devices will outnumber desktops and laptops. Last year, Gartner saw that worldwide tablet shipments will finally overtake PCs in 2015. When we’re thinking about UX, we must continue to put more focus on these devices, their limitations, and their capabilities.
We enjoyed our time at EiC and learned a great deal from top innovators in the identity management space from across the globe. We’re already looking forward to next year’s.
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