You're listening to the identity of the center podcast.
This is a show that talks about identity and access management
and making sure you know who has access to what let's get
started. Welcome to the identity of the
center podcast I'm Jeff. And that's Jim.
Hey Jim hey Jeff, how are you? Oh, not so bad yourself.
I think we have an issue with temperature control.
I don't feel like there's an issue at all.
Fill. It feels crazy your way
sometimes. This is happening.
There are certain non-negotiables 665 degrees in
York. It's, I'm looking at the
thermostat 66 degrees in here. It's like an icebox in here.
It's nice. This is cool.
This is like, you're going to write your user me out of here.
Well, I've got a lot of technology in here, you know, we
have to keep it cool. To make sure that things are
operating at a consistence level.
Here's something most people probably don't know about.
You is, you're pretty environmental Jeff.
It's 110 degrees outside and in her room is like 66.
Yeah. And there's three air
conditioners in this week. By the way, there's three
different thermostats and I have them all set to 66 because I
need to be cool and I have my fan running here next to me.
I've spoken my piece. All right, so we're here at the
Gartner. I am Summit AT a lot of
different conversations with very cool people in the
industry. Our next one is no different.
It's with Jamie Lewis grow. She's the vice president
Solutions engineering and strategy with sabian's.
She's also a great friend and family of the program welcome
back. Jamie thank you for having me.
This is fun. Yeah so this is the original I
think not original I was I was probably the add-on but the
strategy team for identity strategy team.
Exactly. So it's been a little bit of
like a homecoming. I think for a lots of the former
ident rope Ian's that have been a Shore House.
We've done like different areas but the three of us were the
strategy team for Gartner. We were we developed a strategy
and roadmap for Gardner the. I think that the Eternal
identity and access management but there's still something to
be proud of. I'm not sure if we can say that
but we just did some. You just said that due to
limitations have maybe a elapsed, it was probably for
what five years ago, maybe roughly.
But yeah, kind of a cool little feather and all of our campuses
like hey thanks. So who did Gartner go to to
create their? I am strategy.
Oh, they went to Jamie Jim and Geoff.
Yes! Lord.
Remember, people used to say you have to have the first initial J
to work at your company. He had also Jeff Chang and a few
others. Anyway, we digress.
All right, let's get back. Let's get, let's get on top.
Let's get to it. Yeah, let's talk identity.
So Jamie, how's the conference going so far for the conference
is going? Well, there's a lot of energy.
It's certainly keeping us busy. There's a lot of people wanting
to talk to us in the booth. So, it's exciting.
We get to, you know, tell customers about the benefits of
our organization. How to solve?
Business problems and just a lot a lot happening.
I did notice that your booth had a lot of foot traffic, so I'm
trying to have you been spending at the booth?
First going on, striking up conversations with people?
I would say 90% of my time has been striking up conversations
in the booth in the booth. Okay, yeah, yeah, I mean, I
think, you know, I fantasize everybody is like, pretty open
to, you know, conversations like Sit down with some folks today
at breakfast. And one of the people was
wearing a shirt with the little Hershey's kiss on his, they do
you work for her. She's as like, ya know, just the
fan did, you know our shirts? I hope you saw.
I'm pretty sure I saw you. You have like a t-shirt shaped
like beer, koozie. We have beer cozy.
Yeah, that's cool. Beer koozies for the Beer Garden
tonight, but no, the, I know Pam shirts and I know, Pam to mmm.
Yeah, mmm. You should check them out,
right? Thank you.
Each need a shirt. I'm sure we'll stop by get.
Get some get some right? That's the one thing I haven't
done yet is go really through the vendor home or the expo
hall, whatever we're calling it. And actually, like talk with a
vendor's, I feel like I've just been working the whole time and
not only had a chance to like, actually explore and talk with
some of the vendors out there, I was hanging out the one Cosmos
one Cosmos Booth. I can say that one Cosmos booth
for like five minutes and I saw there's people who go around
from Booth to Booth who just yeah.
My badge so I can get this way. Although swaggered of the you
have and throw them bag so I know why do they want to carry
all those home? I don't I just don't know what
were no. I mean early in my conference
going days I would try to get the t-shirts and you wash them
twice and then you have to throw them out because they fall
apart. Not that savings t-shirts like
that I'm sure they're very high quality and are very high
quality. High quality cotton gold and
platinum threads yes stuff like that.
I don't know, every conference seems to have those folks who
like to just accumulate all the stuff that is.
That is true. It's like RSA was the same way.
I remember walking through like if you've been RSA it's at the
Moscone Center downtown San Francisco and they have this
tunnel that basically connects North and South which is
typically where they have like the Thunder halls and I remember
walking through a couple years ago and they'll the walls were
lined with people with bags of stuff like big shopping bags to
handers both. Hands like loaded with Just Junk
and I'm like, okay, how are you going to get that anywhere and
it is that how is that worth anything to anyone, right?
I don't get it stress. Squeeze balls.
Yeah, when I was stupid stuff, I mean Jeff you forgot to mention.
Also we are in this luxurious Suite.
We are 66 degrees and our friends at our SM are paying the
bill for us. So we're very appreciative of
that. They are.
Thank you very much Artisan for keeping me cool while.
We're putting out this hot podcast.
Yeah yes I don't think we have to pay extra for sure our
conditioning but well I we've got technically cops too.
So we trade this Cubs for t-shirts.
That's a good trait. And icid, tumblers, we've been
given away to folks who have been appearing on VIPs, only
VIPs only, yes. And anyone else who we can get
up here. So, let's get back to the
conference because you mentioned, you were having
conversations one of the conversations that you had was
Actually a presentation. Yes, it was a panel that you
hosted yesterday that was called stories of cloud identity
transformation. And you had representatives from
brown-forman Wawa and Phillips 66 for folks who didn't catch it
live. I guess, what's the synopsis
from from that conversation? Yeah.
So I would say that overall theme was really about
technology using technology to enable a larger Cloud
transformation strategy. However, it's not just about
technology so it goes back to some of the principles that the
three of us are very familiar with, as we did Consulting with
our customers, is that it's all about policy.
You need to nail a policy. The policy that needs to be
supported by the process, the process needs to be supported by
the data and then you have success with technology.
So it was, it was a pretty interesting conversation.
They came with different perspectives.
Certainly, there is A lot of discussion around, you know, how
do you approach moving from Legacy to Cloud, you know, to
support those initiatives? Was there?
Anything surprising? I'm sure you prepped for it.
But, you know, with, with the folks are on a panel but was
anything surprising? That came from a story
perspective was like, oh, I hadn't really kind of like,
thought of that or was it? Yeah.
I kind of knew what I was getting into and sort of what to
expect or maybe it was even the panel themselves were they
didn't realize really what they were getting into.
I sort of had some realizations after the fact.
Yeah, I think that what often goes on not unnoticed.
But I think what organizations don't think about is the support
that's necessary from a multitude of various resources
to be successful. And that's something that each
of them touched on it at one point or another is, how do you
bring together the right collections of people You be
successful and whether that's to streamline onboarding, whether
it's to do data correlation, whether it's to do, clean up, it
goes back to realistic, time, schedules and how you lead your
team's through those programs because you have so many touch
points that often the often aren't thought about, I guess.
Yeah, I was also thinking is there sitting that session We
talk about those three organizations.
You measure was a brown-forman. Wow.
And while well until it's. Yeah.
So I mean, there's our organizations that were already
Big 10, 15 years ago so they've already had IM systems probably
Legacy systems that were replaced by Saving.
I'm obviously guessing right. I don't know the background,
man, but my perspective is when you're going to drop in a new
system, you have to be willing. Open-minded to change and that
change includes a, maybe the way we've been doing things is not
the way we should do them in the future for some people that's
common sense. Right?
For other people. That's like sacrilege, like
there's no way we're to change how he on board people, right?
Ya know there's a lot of business process reframing that
has to happen. Because why Port something over
from a legacy solution into something that is going to give
you the advantage. Age of intelligence and make
suggestions to you, in terms of what users should have access to
what users shouldn't have access to.
You know, you certainly don't want to pour it over bad
processes and bad data into a new solution.
So certainly process re-engineering and I think that
goes overlooked to, I don't think a lot of customers, spend
a lot of time realizing that there's there's work that they
need to consider as part of their Yeah, a lot of y'all to
make garbage, what do you got garbage?
Exactly this more of it, more efficient garbage, generation
minutes, you've talked a few, you know, we talked a little bit
about, I guess your role here with save Ian's, tell us about
Sabian. I think one thing that we want
to kind of bring to folks especially this week of
Gartner's, getting getting people familiar with some of the
vendors that are in this space. What a Sabian do how you guys
different from others that are that are competing in the same
area. Yeah, it's funny.
So it was roughly, I don't know, five six years ago where a sad
day oh where Jeff? And I discovered save Ian and we
were looking at the fine grain entitlements and s0d capability.
That was specific to sap. And we thought, huh?
This is interesting. They're doing something a little
bit different, it's very configurable.
There's a lot of visibility. There's a lot of orientation
around key indicators, and Health of programs.
And as we peel back the onion, we had more and more interest so
much. So that I said, I think I'm
going to go work for this company.
So here I am four years later and I think that was one aspect.
It was they were already converging you know years ago
where they started, we started with fine green entitlements
management. We realized very quickly that we
had to wrap identity governance and administration around that.
At, and then we've continued to converge from there.
So, you know, being a solution that was architected born from
the cloud. And, and it had the inherent
intelligence that, you know, these types of platforms need
were some of the, you know, very early reasons why I thought it
was going to be a pretty interesting company and and
start to shake up the industry a little bit.
Remember sitting in that demo with you and I was like, oh,
this is, this is different. This is interesting, like it Is
it showed a lot of Promise? Remember seeing it the first
time, just because of the, the approach that was being taken
with the sap rules, for example, right?
And that was a weakness that others in the space had and it's
a notoriously difficult system for any IGA vendor to really
kind of get, right? And it was, it was interesting.
It's, it's always fascinating to see, you know these, these
vendors and out there saving included, but others, you know,
playing in the same space and their evolution on the different
capabilities and I look at save Ian and I see A platform, right?
And we were talking with, we saw maida and clear skies built on a
platform, they're built on the servicenow platform, right?
So, I see this is sort of like the other side of that coin,
which is okay. We want to have our identity
system, be the platform, right? Yeah.
And we've done it in a way that it's been very organic in
nature, you know, we're our own platform, we haven't done a
number of, you know, Tech Acquisitions, but we then have
to fold into Our solution. So it's all been very natural.
We have some Visionaries, you know, in the organization and
that's what brought us to Pam, you know, needing and seeing the
the need for that single Enterprise journey and the
appropriate context that you apply to that single Enterprise
Journey. So that, you know, if you're a
regular user doing regular user things, you can do it very
easily versus if you need Need to perform something that's
administrative in nature. Well, we only want to give you
the access that you need for that moment in time and that
moment in time might be five minutes, it might be 10 minutes
and giving the visibility to ensure that whatever was done
with the access that was granted for that period of time or just
generally speaking. If you're a regular user that we
have the history you know behind it to support that Enterprise
Journey. Can you prove what you said you
did? It happened in the way.
You said it was going to happen. Rent.
Exactly, yeah. One of the things that I've
always felt when I saw saving, was that, you could really
configure the system to work the way you want.
And I think like this, why? There are so many parts, so many
products in the imc's, there's different ones that suit
different needs and different organizations wants and desires.
So my thought on the configurability is like I love
that personally. I'm like, I want It to be able
to tune the system to the way I want others want.
Like, give me the exact, you know, Simple Simon way to
configure the system, and I don't want that configurability,
but I think that as a product, or as a platform, you have to
decide which end of the spectrum.
Are we going to be on? Or we're going to try to
restrict your ability to configure the system, or we
going to enable that and it seems to me that Savings more on
the, we're going to enable you to have the system work, the way
you want. Yeah, 100%.
There's a lot of configuration capability, but there's also the
movement towards, you know, continuing to be very API
friendly as an example and the the thought around bring your
own. So now, you know, we want to
encourage customers and partners to do things like build their
own integration. Nations build their own, you
eyes and bring those things along.
So, you know, not only can you configure the 80% of the
standard capability that you might require the other 20% that
you might want to make very specific to your unique business
problems. You can bring it along with you
because we have that extensibility layer to do so.
Building your own UI that is bold because I think that's
something that normally most people would associate.
It was the identity space with more of a consumer based
approach where you've got like marketing and communication
seems everyone. I like craft the customer
experience and usually you'll see things like apis and stuff,
kind of power and things behind the scenes.
And I guess this is maybe a little bit of news to me, so you
can educate me. When you say build your own UI,
what are you talking about? So I would say that At a likely
scenario would be mostly or more along the lines of third-party
access governance. So, you know, it's not science
necessarily but you have delegated Administration and you
have diverse different business entities, different types of
third, party users. And perhaps you want to create a
very simplistic UI for the third party users.
Who are accessing your system. That's just that's one thing
that comes to mind but, you know, there's a lot of
configuration within the UI itself.
So there's not a necessity to bring your own, we just wanted
to give that extensibility to customers.
I would say, you know, Integrations are probably more
popular than say, bring your bring your own UI.
So here's the topic that Jeff and I run into a time, right?
You have the potential client where Their HR Group is saying
our HR System is for employees only, we're only going to manage
employee data yet. They have all these non-employee
users contractors Consultants guests and you as an IGA vendor
or really is like a consultant to your clients.
How do you recommend that they address that problem?
Is it manage those people in our solution or look at some other
solution created? The base.
What what is your approach to that problem?
It's often managing an hour solution, you know, we have
third party access management, so you can do the whole
cradle-to-grave full lifecycle management of those identities.
So, that's kind of the Consulting role of working with
your clients and one of the big themes here at Gartner.
This week was talking about selling and I am program within
the business rate. I think the way you know I've
referred to how Rebecca who is Talk about Bri, you know,
there's this value of I am, was, you know, we're going from
having a seat at the Kids Table to having a seat at the adults
table. I am is being taken seriously
now, right? But the way we need to
communicate the value is in terms of the business value that
I am praying, so business results.
Are you helping your clients with in terms of like expressing
that value? Explain that value?
Is that something that's in your wheelhouse or something?
They're doing ahead of time? No, it's in our wheelhouse.
I would say, oftentimes customers Focus so much on very
explicit requirements because you're talking to technology
folks. So we, it is our responsibility
as subject matter experts to take those requirements and
really understand what's at the root.
Roots of them wanting to do something in a certain manner
or, you know, supporting a particular use case.
So, you know, we always have to explain business value.
I go back to my days of Consulting, the the so, what
you're going to do this. So what, you know, what does it
mean to the business? Well, you know, if you're going
to implement, you know, Pierre analytics as part of your access
request process. The so what it is that it is
going to suggest you the appropriate access and it makes
it faster more efficient and then there's less work for your
end users and therefore they're spending less time managing
their access. So we always have to go back to
the. So what and the business value
and ensuring that you know, we have the right level of risk
balance with the right level of, you know, business process and
efficiency. Yeah.
I think that's the big partnership.
We're a technology vendor or Consulting partner can bring to
their clients has you know being able to help articulate that
message and kind of, you know, one of the thoughts.
I was also having a sure you kind of run into this.
A lot is, how do you help clients hit the ground quickly,
rather than like buying software and then kind of coming up to
me? It's like, you know, you need to
have that roadmap, you need to have that plan.
Before you, you know, execute your contract and that clock
starts ticking read the bills. Start piling up pretty quickly
and you want to get something out there in production as
quickly as possible. And reality like the scenario
where you buy the software and it becomes self-aware for your
the technology vendor doesn't want that, right?
That's it's like not like our goalie.
Hey like was like gym, memberships, like I think Jim's
like to sell memberships and The people stop dumbbell upright,
they don't show up, that's their bhisma.
I don't think that technology vendors want that, right?
We don't and in fact, we've done a lot of things to be able to
implement micro phases microprojects and six eight, ten
weeks to drive that value. So something that I think is
interesting that, you know, we do as an organization is you
know, the concepts in selling. You have mutual action plans.
So what are the steps that are required Acquired to
essentially, get a customer to buy a solution and and what we
do is we create a technology aspect of that.
What are the things that need to happen for the customer to,
truly understand the advantage of the solution?
And then break it down into little teeny, tiny Parts.
Because we're still in a situation where all the
education that we're doing is really being done through Zoom.
There's still a lot of fatigue in these, these room.
Meetings. People don't want to be in 345
our Workshop settings so we break it down into technical
action plans, so that we peel back the onion.
We really can focus in on the pain points and then we can
drive a strategy that aligns with essentially, like a quick
start approach to getting something laid down for the
customer, so that we don't take time between, you know, a
customer being on board. Added as a saving a customer and
then seeing that value. So we try to set that up in
advance through those workshops. I love that idea that what you
call it quick action plan, but like four weeks six weeks, eight
weeks of value. Give us some examples of like
what the scope of something like that might look like.
Yeah. So I would say, for example, you
know, taking some number of critical applications and Just
going back to what is your data look like.
So something that's very easy as you start with the data.
What does that mean? Well, let's look at your risky
entitlements for particular number of applications and let's
get it through a certification. Let's get the revokes in place
and let's clean up the data. So very very quick way to get a
win in eight to ten weeks. Yeah, for an organization that's
About to spend money on an IGA solution, you can be pretty sure
there's some data issues, right? There's going to be some say
it's always cobs. What I'm talking about man.
Yeah, you give me some cobwebs in that data.
So they get data cleanup exercise, where you can leverage
that investment is a fantastic idea.
You need to do the cleanup, right?
But you don't want to take six months and that's all you do,
right? So if you can kind of lay down,
some technology footprint, sir. To import that data correlated,
look for the bad stuff and maybe gate your user interface out to
some business users. Who can start to, you know,
knock out the cobwebs. Great idea.
Yeah. And a super high-value activity
is around, you know, Pam remove standing access standing
privilege. Get just-in-time laid down, you
know, for a series of users and we turn that on and get it.
Implemented for customers in six weeks.
So now you've just taken some of that privilege and
administration burden away from, you know, your classic users
that have just too much privilege.
So eliminate that very quickly. Yeah, what I'm hearing is
Jamie's going to come to your house and in six weeks all,
while your identity problem. Not going to try here, she's
gonna get in there. She should clean your data.
Everything's gonna be just in time micro phases.
Projects, build, success, build momentum.
We all want to, I'm sorry if you think that, then if you think
it's gonna all be done in six weeks, like I've got some
beachfront property in Nebraska, I've got a saw you, but you can
get stuff done. You can get stuff done.
It doesn't always have to be like this.
Gee whiz, you know, huge public facing thing.
It could be. Yeah, we got the data cleaned up
and that's a precursor and guess what the data is clean now.
Like it's going to be used other places to that could be an
example, could be a very basic Workflow to do basic onboarding
basic off-boarding. I feel like sometimes we get
lost in the grand picture that we forget to celebrate the
little lens on the way, I think. That's where the best road maps
come in is, how do you show iterative improvements, right?
Can't just go say, Hey, you go me to give me 2 million dollars
and I'll come back with a night. And I am platform in two years,
like, that's not gonna happen. Yeah, we talked about it is, get
clean. Stay clean.
Mmm. Yeah.
Well I also think that in certain situations as the I am
program manager or Of you know the practitioner, it takes some
some bold leadership, sometimes to, you know work up the chain
and say we're not going to be flipping a switch and nine
months, all of our problems aren't going to go away.
It is a matter of we're going to be running an IM program from
now. Until we both retire, we're
always going to be in this game and we're going to get
ourselves, you know, make the path to better.
But in nine months all of our problems are going to be solved.
That's sometimes hard just delivering bad news, right?
That nobody wants to hear my spending a million dollars to
get better. Well, that's that's the world we
live in. Now, there's always look the
look for guarantees, right? It's, if I give this to you, I
will never have another audit finding again.
Ya know, you're reducing the risk.
The chance of it happening, maybe, but it's not a real like
realistic expectation. Yeah.
All right. Let's And start to wrap things
up. But before we go why know that
we have Star Wars Super Fan over here next to me.
So we're going to close it on a lighter note.
I've got actually a couple, the first one.
Yes. Who or what is your favorite
Star Wars character? I know what you're going to say.
I'm going to ask you for an alternate.
I don't want rules. I mean it has to be Leia.
Okay? Every little girl loved Princess
Leia because she embodies empathy and she brings together
people for the greater good. And that's what I like to think.
I do. You still have those big buns on
the side of your when I can you can't?
I've seen the pictures. All right?
And then my My second question, still in the Star Wars Universe
you have a daughter. What order did you show her?
The Star Wars movies and obviously we started with
episode for the true first episode.
The true first episode A New Hope and then we moved on to
five and six and then we went seven, eight and nine because
one, two and three, they just don't exist.
Slow curveball here. Hmm.
I liked what I mean look I I like Star Wars.
I like them all. Sure, there were some annoying
things. Even 789 had some weird stuff
somehow Palpatine returned. This is the ladies.
Yes, piece of writing, I think I've ever heard in a major like
franchise, but I still enjoy it for what it is.
Well, I can tell you that Ray is also very well-liked in the
household. Okay.
Mhm. I would say she's a second
favorite. Okay, I can see it.
Jim favorite Star Wars character.
Captain Picard I'm not expect it boy.
There goes all of our credibility.
You've been listening to the last episode of Daredevil in
certain pockets. It's right.
It's gonna be a solo show going forward and I like to look at my
new clothes. Jamie I'm gonna go with Han Solo
just cause I always thought he was bad ass.
And, you know, any orange jumpsuit known on the orange
jumpsuit. That was the best console.
What. Yeah.
What are you talking about? We know that's wrong.
Captive card. All right, we're going to call
this one because it's gone off the rails.
Yep. We're we've gone off the tracks.
All right, thank you very much for joining.
It's good to see you again. Lovely to see you.
Another part of the family here from Identity, as far as we go,
you can find us on the web identity to center.com.
We're on Twitter at idea. See podcast.
If you want to learn more about savings and connect with, Jamie
will have Shola links in the show notes, but you can find
save Aunt, essay, Avi ynt.com and we'll go ahead and leave it
there for this week. Thanks everyone for listening
and we'll talk with everyone in the next one.
Thanks for listening to the identity at the center podcast.
If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe and
visit us on the web and identity at the center.com.