Privilege Management -- As a Service

Viewfinity now does privilege management as a service with the simply and aptly named Viewfinity Privilege Management. The company sees technical advantages to the cloud approach. "Most on-premise tools are delivered as a GPO snap-in, or the privileges are managed through scripts in AD," explains Leonid Shtilman, CEO of Viewfinity. "Due to our cloud-hosted platform model, we are able to more easily support multiple AD forests/domains from a single console and mobile and non-domain end users. The customer also has the ability to run reports and propagate policies in real time."

Another advantage: Client machines don't need to be attached to the network or part of the Active Directory domain for policies to be activated. "As soon as the PC connects to the internet, Viewfinity delivers the policies and rules established by the IT administrator. Once delivered, all policies continue to be enforced even while working offline."

For customers, moving to cloud-based identity management is meant to be easy, the company explains. "As a solution-provider, we can easily transition customers who are using an existing privilege management solution, usually a GPO snap-in based implementation, because we provide the entire infrastructure. We simply import their existing policies using an XML format into our solution and deploy our agent onto the endpoints. This can be done via their existing deployment software package via MSI packaging or we offer several deployment options including via e-mail," says Shtilman.

Viewfinity believes the cloud offer great economic value. "Customers no longer have to focus on the management, maintenance and operations of the solution platform. The cloud approach delivers immediate and long-term value, scales with business need, and eliminates the equipment, training, and substantially higher costs of on-premise implementations. Cloud-based solutions provide immediate IT value by having an entire systems management solution up and running in minutes, Shtilman argues.

Posted by Doug Barney on 01/15/2013 at 12:47 PM