I have always believed that the phrase “Jack of all trades, master of none” was the best way to describe many of the solutions our competitors have created to compete with us. There seems to be an all out race to get as many checkboxes on an RFP as possible irrespective of the quality of the capabilities in the product in the real world. 

If anything, with our VC-fed competitors, there seems to be little appetite for trying out new ideas or for pushing the state of the art in identity management or information technology.  How boring is that? And, what a waste of time and money!

What We Have Been Doing and With Whom

Over the last 6 months we have been working with our major accounts and partners to create a new reality in identity management whereby customers and their regulators can get a much better understanding and a positive verified control that works against all identities. 

As with anything revolutionary, the ease of getting a new release of a product with major new technology out the door can be viewed as a receding horizon problem.  Just as you think you are ready to ship, something comes up (new feature, testing, scalability, etc.), that should “only delay the build for a few days…” 

From a CEO’s perspective, the release of a new version of a product is a major milestone where a lot of elements converge such as bug fixes, critical feature requests, performance improvements, and – most interesting – the incorporation of new features never requested or demanded by customers.

Pushing off a release for a few days, weeks or months, is a tough decision to make, but in the big picture, what is the objective?  Is the objective to make the maximum amount of money possible, or is it to create a new and better future reality for our customers?

Creating the Future

You might ask yourself why a company would implement technology that was not part of a known customer requirement.  In fact, such development would be unconscionable for a VC funded or big software company because it has no business case… or does it?

Those of you that have met me or have seen me present are probably aware that I am a software developer and actually use and test all of our products. Yes, we have a staff, but I personally want to experience what you experience – good, bad or otherwise with our products – especially before you do.  Being hands-on, I can see what is wrong, as well as what might be possible with current and future technology.

Consequently, as we are putting together new versions of our products we are always saying “what if we did xyz…?” And, because we are not beholden to a board of directors and investors, we can take the time to try and implement new, cool features in our products with a few simple and compelling goals in mind:  a) to make you, our customer happy, and b) we want to provide you with real security and ever better coverage by leveraging the latest technology. The CPUs and disks in your servers may need to work a bit harder with each version of our code, but it means that you get better coverage, stronger controls, and great audit outcomes with less work on your part.

The Conundrum

As a privately held company, we have the freedom to reinvest the money you give us in R&D, development and testing of our products to enhance your experience and to better protect your systems. This strategy is exciting for us, motivating for our brilliant development staff, and a pleasure for our systems engineers and sales staff because they always have new, cool things to show you.

On the other hand, we receive calls almost every day from venture capitalists telling us that we are wasting our money on innovation and R&D, and should instead invest it exclusively in sales and marketing to generate maximum sales and earnings. 

In fact, one of our competitors said that they used to care about their customers and the success they had with their products, but are now only interested in making a buck – this is very sad and a testament to how VC funding has created a toxic environment.

A Final Postscript

Recently we were asked to comment on a melt-down at RBS/NatWest and here too we saw the repeat of a pattern that we have tried to avoid: “the right way to develop”.  In a recent conversation I had with one of our competitors, I was discussing how we work in small teams and try to innovate on short cycles using what is known as extreme programming.  Our competitor’s position was that they were much better organized and were process oriented in their development using the “proven techniques” that are now melting down RBS/NatWest.  I think I will stick with hiring really smart and talented developers in-house vs. developing code the “right way” our competitors are using (which is to outsource their development).

Releasing

We will soon be releasing Enterprise/Random Password Manger 4.83.4 which is truly an amazing piece of work by our entire team. As we like to say, this covers everything from the copper to the application, and it really does, at fantastic scale. 

It is more than a privileged identity management solution; it is a new paradigm in general identity management (but, it is a hell of a PIM solution too).