IDDriven has designed a SaaS offering that is full featured while also simple to use, and which they will be selling through a channel that they are looking to grow.

IDdriven, a startup that is European in origin, but which is based in Sacramento, is releasing its core IAM [Identity and Access Management] offering today, an Identity as a Service [IDaaS] offering that that company says will be a disruptive force.

“We solve the problem of large volumes of users in the enterprise that enter, get promoted, and have different access rights,” said Geurt van Wijk, IDdriven’s COO. “Our  application allows a company to easily manage all the access rights, regardless of whether they just joined, got promoted or leave.”

IDdriven started up in 2013 in Europe. The founders had been involved with on-prem IAM before but saw the trend to the cloud, and decided to start building a pure cloud IAM product. They worked on third party software development projects for other companies to get the development money for their own until last year, when they secured venture funding to finalize the last part.

“We then bought a public shell and moved our own company in, to become a public company in the U.S.,” said Arend Verweij, IDdriven’s CEO.

Many other companies, including large and cloud-focused ones are also in this space, but IDdriven believes it can differentiate themselves from the pack.

“The big software vendors in IAM focus on the authentication side, and do a little access management,” Verweij said. “We are on the other side of the spectrum. We come from access management. We don’t do anything on authentication. We leave that to the big players.”

This focus has resulted in IDdriven being designed to integrate seamlessly with these other Identity Management systems, to add new functionality. The offering has very specific role and zone-based access control, allowing for management of employee identities and access rights based on their company role and precise location, anywhere in the world, and on all devices. Access rights can be defined around a geo fence, which can include a fixed headquarters location, additional locations like a home or cottage that the user can add themselves, or preset routes mobile teams might use.

“For instance, UN teams in hostile territories on tasks like weapons inspections have preset routes they cannot deviate from,” said  Remy de Vries, IDdriven’s CTO. “If they were to be kidnapped and their laptops removed from that route, their access rights would be cancelled because they are in effect only on the pre-set route.”

While most IAM solutions tend to be complex, IDdriven says theirs was purposefully designed to be extremely simple, and accessible to all users, regardless of experience level.

“The product is made in such a way that it would suit every type of business,” van Wijk said. “It really fits almost every size of business as well. Companies with 50 users deal with this problem, although it makes more sense if you have 500, or thousands of users. We are talking with colleges at the moment. Since we are cloud-based, and the customer can onboard himself in five minutes, it’s very suitable for smaller markets as well.” The SaaS model, with its low entry point, also increases the addressable market.

“In the selection process for our first customer, we had to fight against the big guys, and we were able to go beyond them in terms of the functionality they offered,” de Vries added.

IDdriven is using a channel go-to-market strategy, something they acknowledge is necessary to make themselves better known to customers. They presently have eight partners, two of whom are in North America, one on the east coast of the U.S. and one on the west. Along with the product launch, the company also announced the IDdriven Partner Network to support them.

“Our typical partner is one with customers who buy services,” van Wijk said. These can be both MSPs and VARs. “At the moment, our focus is on IAM partners, and in the longer term it will also be companies that provide compliance services to customers.” While the number of partners is very small today, the plan is to expand that, although not to create a large channel.

“We are very committed to our partners,” de Vries said. “After we introduce them to the product, and give them sessions how to implement it, we will continue to have open lines with our partners as they move along, rather than just asking them to go sell.”