New Identity-as-a-Service Approach for Provisioning, Managing Users of Business and Employee-Introduced Cloud Apps
BOSTON, May 21, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Innovation District —
LogMeIn, Inc. (Nasdaq:LOGM) today announced a preview of AppGuru, the
company’s new product specifically designed to help IT professionals
embrace, secure and manage the rapid influx of business and
employee-introduced cloud applications in the workplace — apps that
have been adopted with little or no IT involvement. Built to help IT
pros redefine their strategic role in today’s cloud-centric work
environment, AppGuru’s identity-as-a-service (IDaaS) features are
designed to centralize the management of users in the cloud, thereby
easing the onboarding and off-boarding of employees, while providing a
single tool for setting and enforcing policies for business and
personal productivity cloud apps. As a result, IT pros can encourage
and even empower the widespread use of such apps, while mitigating
potential inherent data loss and compliance risks.
As business applications move to the cloud and new, employee-introduced
cloud apps take hold in the workplace, the nature of and need for
identity management is changing. A December 2012 study conducted by
Edge Strategies on the bring-your-own-app (BYOA) trend found nearly 70%
of companies reported active use of employee-introduced cloud apps at
work. According to the findings, only 22 percent of IT pros indicate
they are fully prepared to handle BYOA and 43 percent are concerned
with the lack of control over these apps. In addition, SaaS enterprise
apps (e.g. Salesforce.com), are often controlled by line-of-business
owners, thus putting traditional IT tasks such as provisioning and
policy control in the hands of business users outside the IT
department.
AppGuru is aimed at addressing the management challenges caused by this
new dynamic by introducing an approach to cloud based identity
management — or IDaaS — that centralizes management and control while
providing an alternative to the disparate, ad-hoc and often error prone
process of procuring, configuring and deploying cloud applications into
a business environment.
"The feedback we have received from our IT customers is consistent:
Today’s IT pro isn’t looking to impede the use of employee-introduced
technology, and they fully appreciate the benefits of the cloud. The
challenge many of them are facing is, as their role shifts into one of
expert advisor and partner to the business, traditional approaches to
user management, provisioning and security are often ill-suited for
these new dynamics," said Michael Simon, CEO of LogMeIn. "AppGuru is
designed to help these IT professionals embrace the new app centric
world, and redefine their role as business partner in a cloud-enabled
workplace."
AppGuru aims to help IT pros address:
— Time consuming application management: A centralized console provides an
easier way to manage multiple cloud apps than with dozens of
application-specific admin tools
— Creating and managing identities in the cloud: Creating new users,
importing existing users from current cloud apps, and leveraging
existing Active Directory services to provision users, onboard them, and
as needed, off-board employees across all cloud apps under management
— The challenge of managing cloud app licenses: A catalog of apps
simplifies subscription management in a single, unified interface
— Data privacy, compliance, and security risks: Granular policy
enforcement to control app-level security and customization settings
— The complexity of traditional policy management tools: Simple policy
creation and customization across apps to address varying requirements
across the organization
The preview of AppGuru gives IT pros the ability to manage LogMeIn’s
popular collaboration apps, join.me and Cubby, as well as 3rd party
cloud offerings like Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365 through a
single, centralized tool. LogMeIn plans to rollout support for dozens
of today’s most popular cloud apps in the coming weeks and months.
Once out of beta, LogMeIn plans to offer AppGuru both as a standalone
cloud app management solution, as well as an integrated component of
new enterprise versions of Cubby, LogMeIn’s cloud file sync and share
app, and join.me, LogMeIn’s online meeting and collaboration app.
Those interested in the AppGuru preview can request an invite via the
AppGuru site. Preview versions of the Enterprise editions of Cubby and
join.me are also available.
About LogMeIn, Inc.
LogMeIn (Nasdaq:LOGM) transforms the way people work and live through
secure connections to the computers, devices, data, and people that
make up their digital world. The company’s cloud services free millions
of people to work from anywhere, empower IT professionals to securely
embrace the modern cloud-centric workplace, give companies new ways to
reach and support today’s connected customer, and help businesses bring
the next generation of connected products to market.
LogMeIn is headquartered in Boston’s Innovation District with offices
in Australia, Hungary, India, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the UK.