Saturday, December 16, 2017

PIAM, CIAM, PAM, it's all IAM


During my career I noticed abbreviations are used all the time in IT.
When I started this blog it was all about SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and some other aaS-variants.
It quickly became all known as the cloud, another fancy marketing word for the internet.
First people got headaches on finding out what all those different aaS-variants meant and then suddenly they were confronted with a new word: the cloud.
People, it's all marketing mumbo jumbo, inventing new words for already existing phenomena.

Ok, the internet as it is known now, is more complicated and interactive (especially mobile) than in the beginning, but it's still the internet, the digital highway.

It's all IAM

Why I am saying this?
Recently a infosecurity peer of mine, Andre Koot from Nixu (great guy and company!), shared on LinkedIn an article about PIAM with the remark: 'IAM, CIAM, PAM, now introducing PIAM... '.
That triggered my engagement, and especially when I saw the domain the article was posted on: securitysales.com. 
Aha, another new abbreviation and it's published on a sales-site.
PIAM is like CIAM just a way of Identity and Access Management (IAM), embodied in a product to sell. Nothing more, nothing less.

Just like the cloud, nothing more than internet.

IAM, CIAM, PIAM, keep cool!


So the next time you read: 'With this PIAM solution, by SaaS vendor X you can safely do IAM in the cloud', just keep cool and don't get worried that you do not know all the abbreviations in the sentence.










Saturday, November 18, 2017

Explain SaaS through storytelling

A year ago I announced I was going to do a blog series on ‘Big data, tell it as it is!!
Well, due to a relocation and a new job that took a ‘bit’ more time.
But, I keep a promise.

G’day

As my readers know, I try to explain SaaS as it is in a readable manner.
I also like stories, so why shouldn't I use Storytelling to deliver my message and start interaction?

So last week I published on Sweetcode about Geordie and his use of R to analyze Apache error logs.
Why not publish more posts about Geordie and his employer ‘G’day’, an Aussie content marketing firm?
By doing this I can explain SaaS, datascience, infosec, forensics and QA in a ‘tell-it-as-it-is’ manner, readable for a broad audience.
Because that’s my mission, explain SaaS without the marketing and technical terms, or at least explain them.

I need your help!

Inspiration for the adventures of Geordie at ‘G’day’ I can retrieve from my own experiences, but why not use crowdsourcing?
TestingSaaS is read globally by SaaS enthusiasts from different sectors like finance (banks, accountants), government, software dev, IT consultancy and many more.
These fellow SaaS enthusiasts work in disciplines like identity, infosec, data science, digital marketing and forensics.
With storytelling we have an instrument to explain SaaS in a simple way, as it is!
But I need your input.
Are you interested or want to give feedback on my TestingSaaS storytelling?
Let me know through the TestingSaaS social media channels.


Let’s work together to explain SaaS through storytelling, as it is!!!


Sunday, July 30, 2017

A day at the office: Configuring Identity in the cloud

The past half year I did not blog that much on TestingSaaS.
With good reason!
I started a new job as a technical consultant at iWelcome and I was quite busy with relocating too.

Why iWelcome?
It is Europe's Identity Platform in the cloud.
iWelcome provides Identity & Access Management as a Service (IDAAS) for organizations, so they can manage the identity lifecycle of their consumers, employees, business customers, partners and suppliers in a secure, simple and efficient manner.

How cool is that?
Since 2010 I have been studying IDAAS (thanks UMA :-) ) and now with the hype of data science (event logging !!) and data privacy (GDPR) I can all combine these disciplines in one job. Who dares wins!

Mind you, I already had some IAM experience at Essent and Onegini, but this was software related, now it's implementation, a complete other ball game with other stakes and rules.

Just one step at a time.

So stay tuned for my further adventures in IAM told on TestingSaaS, eForensics Magazine, Fixate and the iWelcome blog.