Bookmarks: Cloud-based Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Service providers:

• Covisint ⁽¹⁾
• Cloud Access
• Cloud Identity
• IAM Cloud
• Lighthouse Security Group⁽¹⁾
• Okta⁽¹⁾
• Simeio Solutions⁽¹⁾
• Symplified⁽¹⁾
• Verizon⁽¹⁾

⁽¹⁾ Source: The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Cloud Identity And Access Management, Q3 2012

Technologies

• shibboleth

Further readings:

• Okta. 2011. Top 8 Identity and Access Management Challenges with Your SaaS Applications. Okta resources web site.
  http://www.okta.com/resources/whitepaper-8idmc.html
• J. Schwartz. 2010. ADFS 2.0 Opens Doors to the Cloud. Redmond Magazine
  http://redmondmag.com/articles/2010/06/01/adfs-2-opens-doors-to-the-cloud.aspx
• A. Cser, E. Maler,. 2012. The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Cloud Identity And Access Management, Q3 2012. Forrester
• A. Cser. 2012. Build Your Identity And Access Management Strategy. Forrester

A Google map of Cloud Data Centers

Click the image to open Google Map Engine Lite:

One observation on EC2 "dedicated" pricing

According to EC2 pricing for on-demand instances in a multi-tenant mode and in dedicated mode there is an apparent slight difference of $0.006 on instance per hour fee, plus $2 per hour per region when one instance at least is activated on a dedicated mode.

So, using AWS Simple Monthly calculator I have searched how pricing evolves depending on the number of instances you are running in dedicated mode.

First of all, if you run only 1 dedicated "small" instance, 100% of the time, it will cost you ... $1512 a month! $782 per instance, if you run 2 dedicated instances, and so on. Here is the complete comparison matrix:

Observe that running 10 instances in dedicated mode is still 343% more expensive than running these instances in a multi-tenant mode.

This pricing model starts to be "attractive" for significant number of instances (>500) or for instances with a low rate of utilisation.