VMware Announces IDaaS Solution, New ACE Members

VMware (VMW) has laid out its plan to modernize business mobility strategies with a first look at VMware Identity Manager, the company’s new identity-as-a-service (IDaaS) offering that combines its AirWatch enterprise mobility solution with secure identity management software.

VMware Identity Manager is available as both a legacy and virtual solution and will allow users to access a self-service application store, with the ability to log into their applications via single-touch capabilities. The solution can be used across other VMware solutions including vCloud Air and vRealize Suite to provide single sign-on for administrators so they can easily switch between management interfaces, according to the announcement.

The solution meets VMware’s commitment to providing “consumer simple, enterprise secure” software for customers, so they can boost productivity while creating a central hub to manage end-user provisioning, access and compliance, according to Noah Wasmer, vice president of Product Management and chief technology officer of VMware’s End User Computing division.

“VMware has been going after this space for a long period of time and this is something we really think is bringing together the marriage of security and management alongside great user experience across mobile and cloud,” said Wasmer, in an interview with The VAR Guy. “This is a key component … to help businesses start to move from that individual productivity mindset into true business mobility.”

Additionally, VMware announced a renewed commitment to Apple and the iOS platform, including additional investment in the development of application configuration templates and vertical solutions for a single-touch-configured solution, according to the announcement. This is expected to allow joint iOS and VMware users to facilitate faster on boarding of mobile devices in the enterprise.

Finally, VMware announced 15 new partners for its App Configuration for Enterprise Community, a coalition of companies who have promised to develop an open standard approach for managing and securing apps deployed through enterprise mobility management (EMM) solutions.  New members include bigtincan, Deputy, Docusign, Dropbox, Everbridge, Imprivata, Kony, Lua, Microstrategy, OnBase, ScrollMotion, ServiceMax, Showpad, Syncplicity by EMC and Webalo.

The program, which was launched earlier this year by AirWatch, Box, Cisco Systems, Salesforce, Workday and Xamarin, sought to develop EMM-agnostic apps that can be easily downloaded and implemented without software development kit modification for each mobility solution, said Wasmer. The program currently has 21 members.

“This is where we have been embracing both what Apple is doing as well as Google and others to say, ‘There are open standards—we’ve published them, and we have this great momentum that we think is going to be the right way to do security and management alongside simple user access for the next decade,’” said Wasmer.