Dell is pinning its hopes on identity and access management (IAM) to grow its business in SA.
This was revealed by Phil Allen, the company's director for identity and access management for EMEA, in an exclusive interview with ITWeb.
According to Allen, following on from the acquisition of Quest Software in September 2012, Dell made a firm decision to focus on IAM as a cornerstone of the development of the Dell Software Group business in the South African market.
"As such, there is a drive to recruit new personnel to bolster the team as well as to increase the knowledge of the partner community in our identity and access management portfolio," said Allen.
Dell's go-to-market strategy for IAM will be through the channel with support from the company's internal technical and business development experts to help drive their success, Allen revealed.
"We fully understand the unique relationships our channel partners have in the market and are working to enable both existing partners and new partners with specific identity and access management skills on our technology." Describing the opportunities the company sees in the local market, Allen said further demands in access governance requirements are driving a new uptake in IAM projects in SA.
"Previously, identity management was very focused around improving IT efficiencies by providing better management of disparate identity systems, but this is now being superseded by the demands from the business to provide the right information to the right people at the right time, and to make sure there are no conflicts of interest in the information people have access to."
He also pointed out that this level of access governance is being driven by business, combined with the fact that compliance requirements still need to be met. Allen added that it used to be difficult for an organisation to be both compliant and agile, but this is no longer the case, thanks to next-generation identity and access governance.
Speaking about the challenges local organisations face regarding IAM, Allen noted that there is an increased focus on the information that people have access to within a company. He explained that while many audit requirements are not directly related to information that is being governed under the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Bill, the increased focus on who has access to what information has driven this demand.
In addition, there is a definite increase in the need to control the access that privileged users have within the IT department and the need to make sure that someone is not able to use a privileged account to access information they would not normally be entitled to see, he said.
"Organisations are able to meet these challenges through the deployment of market-leading access governance solutions and through the adoption of improved processes to aid business efficiencies and controls," he said.
In conclusion, he said: "Bringing our identity and access management solution to South Africa will allow South African businesses to benefit from the experiences that have been learned in Europe, the US and Asia-Pacific. This will not only benefit the customers in the region, but will also allow the channel to ramp up rapidly and provide greater value to their customers."
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