Infrastructure as a Service

UnboundID (News - Alert), a provider of identity data solutions for cloud, telco, and enterprise computing, has announced the “industry’s first” identity management products based on Simple Cloud Identity Management (SCIM) specification.

The solution, according to company officials, provides a standardized and simpler solution for organizations provisioning and managing user identities across multiple cloud-based services, including Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service offerings. SCIM is designed to reduce duplicative, one-off integrations, allowing organizations to leverage a consolidated data store to automate the provisioning process.

Using UnboundID’s SCIM-enabled directory server, developers can build scalable and secure directory applications with simple, REST-based interfaces. The company is also planning to release an extension to its Synchronization Server allowing it to synchronize identity data from existing data stores—such as Active Directory, LDAP and relational databases to SCIM-enabled cloud applications, like SalesForce.com.

By supporting SCIM-enabled data stores as a destination for its Synchronization Server, UnboundID has delivered a complete solution for integrating identity data from on-premise data stores with SCIM-enabled cloud-based services, the company said.

With this development UnboundID is positioned to provide solutions for both sides of the cloud identity integration problem: a solution for synchronizing data from on-premise identity data stores to the cloud and a high-scale identity data store that supports a RESTful, standards-based interface for cloud service providers.

“By contributing to the development of the SCIM specification as a founding member of the working group, to being the first company to release an SDK for developing applications with SCIM, to delivering the first commercially available solution for sending and receiving identity data via SCIM, UnboundID has proven its commitment to delivering real-time identity management software for cloud, mobile and social applications,” said UnboundID Chief Product Officer Andy Spillane, in a statement .

“We believe we are well positioned not only to support the adoption of SCIM, but to help drive the path of adoption as well,” Spillane added.

In other industry news, recently Infrastructure as a Service enabler Hexagrid (News - Alert) sat down with TMCnet to discuss how 2011 was for the market and where it is headed in 2012. According to Dave Rokita, vice president of technology operations at Hexagrid, it appears that 2012 is poised to be the best year yet for the cloud market because the market is finally educated and comfortable enough with cloud technology and what benefits it affords to move forward with Infrastructure as a Service platforms.

“The 2012 cloud computing market will likely continue to trend towards private cloud computing,” Rokita said. “The industry will start to see the limitations of virtual server farms in both scalability and service delivery.  Hexagrid expects that many organizations will transition from hosted virtualization to more complete cloud computing offerings.”

Want to learn more about cloud communications? Then be sure to attend the Cloud Communications Expo, collocated with TMC’s ITEXPO East 2012taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. The Cloud Communications Expo will address the growing need of businesses to integrate and leverage cloud based communications applications, process enhancement techniques, and network based communications interfaces and architectures. For more information on registering for the Cloud Communications Expo click here.

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