‘7 Minutes’ with Ubisecure CEO Simon Wood

**Editor’s Note: “7 Minutes” is a feature where we ask channel executives from startups – or companies that may be new to the Channel Partners audience – a series of quick questions about their businesses and channel programs.**

Last month Ubisecure, the identity and access management (IAM) and security software company, updated its channel program with a goal to be 100-percent partner-driven within three years. Ubisecure’s focus is on systems integrators, MNOs and service providers; current partners include Avenade, Capgemini and CGI. Ubisecure provides IAM solutions that can manage customer as well as employee logins, and it has an offering in the emerging identity as a service, or IDaaS, space.

Ubisecure’s Simon Wood

It’s competing with specialists such as SailPoint, Okta, Ping Identity and SecureAuth, as well as the likes of CA, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle for an access control market that analysts say is growing: By 2019, more than 80 percent of organizations will use access management software or services, up from 55 percent today, according to Gartner. Allied Market Research says global sales will reach $2.8 billion by 2020. Customers need IAM to control and audit access to systems, applications and data, on premises and in the cloud, no matter what device authorized customers, partners or employees are using.

One selling point for Ubisecure, which is based in the U.K. and Finland, is expertise to help customers navigate the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. The GDPR applies to all organizations that offer goods or services to EU residents, or that collect and analyze their personal data. Enforcement begins May 25, 2018, and heavy fines may be imposed for noncompliance. Ubisecure CEO Simon Wood says helping SIs, MSPs and CSPs build GDPR support into their services is a core component of Ubisecure’s on-premises and cloud-based offerings.

“Our role as a CIAM provider is to empower digital business,” said Wood. “When a business adopts our technology, they are empowering their own customers though a modern self-service model, providing frictionless registration, and giving the ability to manage the authorizations and consent to services and specific information content or web services.”

Ubisecure is also working with the GSMA on Mobile Connect, an interesting area for MNOs.

Wood was named CEO in January; he was formerly CTO with GlobalSign.

Channel Partners: Tell us what customers love about your product or service. What’s the secret selling sauce?

Simon Wood: Ubisecure has been a leader in the customer identity & access management (CIAM) space for over a decade. With that commercial, technical and standards experience comes world-class expertise in the CIAM arena that we share with our partners through our Partner 2020 program.

As for our products, our platform supports a broad range of IAM functionality, such as privacy by design, web single sign-on, self-management, identity federation and more, but has also been optimized for large-scale B2B or B2C use cases and regulatory-driven compliance use cases like GDPR and PSD2 [Revised Payment Service Directive, another EU reg coming online in 2018]. We are also very active in …