Network World has released its annual "10 startups to watch" list, and identity management vendor, Symplified has made the list.
[Full disclosure: I've known Eric Olden and Darren Platt, two of the founders, since late 2002, and would consider both "friends" as well as business contacts.]
Symplified is certainly an interesting company, as they're tackling the whole SaaS and identity problem from a fresh perspective. What's "fresh" about it? Well, they're not a software company that decided to ride the SaaS wave. Rather, they're a company that was founded specifically to deal with the issues that SaaS deployments surface.
Does that make them better equipped to deal with those issues? Time will tell. At the very least, it has allowed their architectural approaches to be build from the ground up for SaaS.
The entire issue of SaaS and identity will only get bigger, and is one of the main trends of what I'd call the "second wave" of identity. There are certainly other vendors positioning to ride this wave; most of them are startups.
I'd bet that the next spate of identity acquisitions we see from the "big guys" will come as they purchase their way into the rapidly evolving SaaS-identity space.
