Centrify Tool Enables Businesses to Centrally Secure, Control SaaS Apps

Centrify, historically focused on on-premise software, has changed its tune to match the symphony being played by the cloud in the last year. The company is now launching a new management tool at the Gartner Identity & Access Management Summit that enables organizations to centrally manage and controll access to SaaS apps and other cloud services.

As more and more businesses of every size continue to deal with the ever-growing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend, they are looking for ways to solve the management and security issues of mobile devices not owned by the corporation. With its new Centrify DirectControl for SaaS offering, billed as identity-as-a-service, the company is aiming to help customers leverage their Microsoft Active Directory investments and lock down the security of the increasing number of cloud apps.

The core to the announcement is a single sign-on login for users, which not only makes things simpler for end users but also provides IT departments with the ability to shut down access easily to an employee that leaves the company.

This is all part of a unified identity infrastructure for IT, said Tom Kemp, Centrify's CEO. The new service, he told Talkin' Cloud, is ideal for SME customers that have a healthy investment in Active Directory and are facing the common problem of dealing with the number and variety of mobile devices connecting to their applications and data.

"We think it's going to allow you to address the security and compliance issues, but also be a less-complex way of managing these applications," said Corey Williams, senior director of product management at Centrify.

The new cloud services management tool provides customers with more visibility into applications access, particularly who is accessing those applications and who has been granted permissions to do so. For end users, there's a strong self-service message that Williams said will have an impact on their satisfaction and productivity.

Centrify DirectControl for SaaS is currently in an open public beta, but the company plans to launch the tool for general availability in the first quarter of 2013.