Adding Identity Federation to a SaaS application

I’ve learned a lot about new technology matter as VP of product management for eXpresso. Of particular value to me has been gaining a deep understanding of the peripheral services a SaaS vendor needs to incorporate in order to arrive at the whole product, for example managed hosting, payment processing, analytics, etc. Recently I have been delving into the area of Internet Single-Sign-On (SSO). This is something every SaaS provider should have an action plan for as early on as possible, 

especially if the service being offered is business-focused. 

Having a standards-based implementation for enabling SSO for partners and customers can accelerate the adoption and increase the revenue potential of your service. There are a number of “standards” making their rounds currently, but the ones that seem to becoming established are SAML and OpenID for SSO and OAuth for API authorization.  There are a variety of commercial off-the-shelf products available to help SaaS vendors become compliant with these standards – on the service end as well as on the consumer/identity end (for enabling SaaS customers to become compliant). Some products and services in this domain that I have become familiar with are:

 

From TriCipher: 

myOneLogin Federation for identity federation, and myOneLogin Secure SSO for End-user Internet SSO. I recently blogged about my discovery of myOneLogin.

From Ping Identity: 

Ping Federate for identity federation, and SignOn.com for end-user Internet SSO.

There’s another category of web technologies that aggregate access to web apps onto a webtop that use these authentication/authorization standards and technologies. I have become familiar with (and really like) Symantec’s GoEveryWhere offering. Symantec licensed technology from TriCipher to achieve the SSO component of their offering. We had a partnership with them at eXpresso and I wrote about it in this blog posting.

The Importance and Challenge of Microsoft’s Office Collaboration

Last month Microsoft made a string of announcements about new “software plus services” that they are bringing to market, most notably Azure, Windows 7 and Office Web applications. What struck me was the sheer volume of blogs, discussions and analyses that attempt to decipher Microsoft’s announcements and explain how the pieces could possibly fit together to benefit Joe the end-user. This ripple effect demonstrates the importance of collaborating with Microsoft Office files and the significant challenges users will encounter.

Let’s face it, Microsoft Office produces the single most important set of document types for which business users need the ability to collaborate, but its massive install base suffers from predictable version disparity. Today, it is common for an Office 2007 document to be given to someone who edits it in Office 2003 and passes it on to someone who needs to open it in Office XP. And when Office 14 is released in 2010, it’s safe to assume there will still be users of Office 2000. Collaboration would work seamlessly if all these Office versions had the same file format, but they don’t!

With Office 2007, Microsoft introduced new file formats that are not backward compatible (.xlsx, .docx, .pptx).  This means Office 2007 formatted documents must be converted to be viewed or edited in earlier Office versions. Frustratingly, the new file formats have little to no benefit to end users, causing most Office 2007 users to save all their files as earlier Office document formats (.xls, .doc, .ppt). This way their friends and colleagues can view and edit their documents with less hassle.

Not surprisingly, Office 97-2003 document formats will continue to be the lingua franca of business and remain the common denominator most every PC or Mac user can view and edit. Therefore, when eXpresso releases its full support for Office files in early 2009, it will automatically convert all Office documents to these formats and give them all the real-time collaborative properties that eXpresso users have enjoyed with Excel since the beginning. Thankfully, eXpresso users won’t even have to think about formats.

Cloud Computing Defined

My favorite and very concisce definition of Cloud Computing is that it is "fundamentally about the commoditization of IT infrastructure". These are some interesting and useful resources for helping define Cloud Computing:

1. Inside the emerging world of cloud computing [InfoWorld]

• Who provides what in the cloud


• Cloud versus cloud


• The dangers of cloud computing


• What cloud computing really means


• A step closer to the integrated cloud

2. Cloud Computing begins to emerge from the haze [InfoWorld]
3. An A to Z of Cloud Computing [SEO/SEM Journal]

4. Goodnight Cloud Misconceptions [ebizQ/Phil Wainewright, The Connected Web]

Our world is getting more and more interesting

If, like me, you are a semi-technical software professional with formal software training and real-world experience, there is a phenomenon going on as we speak that we should really be getting excited about: - platforms for creating composite collaborative applications (mash-ups). For example:

• Salesforce.com Force.com
• WebEx Connect
• Facebook Platform

These platforms are popping up as if from nowhere and they offer:

To the end-user:- the promise of a single-point of access to every single application that he may use to perform his day-to-day functions.

To the SaaS vendor:- A way to tap into the vast user community accessible by the larger vendors (Salesforce, WebEx, Facebook) and accelerate the adoption of your application service.

The catch is... the companies behind these platforms need to recruit partners that have the capacity and staying power to deliver the components to these mash-ups and then they need to contribute in a real way to the success of those companies.

Working for an up-and-coming software company in the collaboration space, these plaforms offer a significant amount of promise along with several challenges, some that I'm sure I'm not even aware of yet. Establishing a paper-based partnership with above-mentioned companies is a little more than a mere formality, but articulating a sound joint value proposition, delivering a solution, and converting curious eyeballs into revenue-generating users is a different ball of wax.

But challenges are good and I'm thrilled to be part of this revolution.

Insights gained from Office 2.0 blog postings

It certainly seems that businesses now expect the interaction and accessibility of the web in any new business app they procure—they aren’t enticed by just the "wow" factor any longer.

In the end, battle is over accumulation of developers and users.

eXpresso Debuts Groundbreaking Real-Time Collaborative Environment for Excel Spreadsheet Users

eXpresso(TM) Debuts Groundbreaking Real-Time Collaborative Environment for Excel Spreadsheet Users


KillerStartup.com: "Considering that spreadsheets have become one of the most important office applications in the world today, eXpresso should probably see a similar surge in popularity. This is exactly what the corporate world has been waiting for."


CrunchBase: "Expresso Corp is bringing new capabilities to Microsoft Excel. Using their software users can manage, compare and collaborate on Excel documents – features that Microsoft surprisingly hasn’t added on their own."

eXpresso Launches

After several months, even more sleepless nights, and the amazing efforts of a lot of people here in the US and in Vietnam, we officially launched eXpresso this week! The product looks great and without exception we've had very positive feedback from users, analysts and the press. I suspect that everyone will hear a whole lot more about eXpresso in the coming months.

For me personally it has been and continues to be an amazing experience. Bringing a hosted software application to the market that has appeal to potentially millions of users is really exhilirating. In my role as VP of product marketing, I have had the privilege of working very closely with an amazing engineering team in Vietnam, an up-and-coming managed hosting provider (Rackspace), Venture Capitalists, and a marketing team that has a whole lot to learn about marketing online applications (this includes me). It feels great showing the product to senior folks at companies like Microsoft and Salesforce.com and hearing them praise our efforts to date and encouraging us to keep them in the loop of what we're doing.

The rest of 2007 will consist of a lot of hard work, but I sense that this will be rewarding one way or another.