In a move to help enable partners to develop extensions to its core product features, identity and access management (IAM) provider SailPoint today announced a new plugin framework for its IdentityIQ platform. As part of its early access program, SailPoint unveiled a plugin to help manage privileged account management (PAM) solutions, as well as a series of plugins from partners such as ColumnIT, Heimore, Identropy, KOGIT and Regatta.

Late last year, SailPoint announced an innovative open IAM platform designed to integrate with IT and security infrastructure to help enterprises achieve “identity awareness.” The release of the open framework is an expansion on that program, better enabling developers to incorporate the program into comprehensive infrastructure solutions.

“The plugin framework allows resellers to deliver innovative extensions to the core IdentityIQ product that deliver unique solutions to their customers,” said Paul Trulove, vice president of product management for SailPoint, in an email to The VAR Guy. “This allows SailPoint’s reseller and SI partners to extend the value the provide in the channel, especially in cases where they are serving specific verticals or market segments (e.g., healthcare, financial services, edu).”

Vertical-specific solution suites are increasingly touted as a way for traditional resellers to maintain a solid market presence in a channel ecosystem in which cloud and mobile technologies are making as-a-service offerings the go-to choice for end user customers. And in an environment where security concerns top the list of issues CIOs are most worried about, SailPoint says implementing IAM platforms that put identity at the core of enterprise governance and compliance efforts is key to mitigating the risk of breaches or attacks.

“Enterprises need identity-specific context to make more informed, real-time decisions to fully participate in securing access to an organization’s structured and unstructured data,” wrote Trulove. “Truly, they need to be ‘identity-aware.’ The only way to achieve this is to put identity at the core, which requires an IAM platform designed to integrate with the fabric of the IT and security infrastructure.”

SailPoint says it and its partners will be demonstrating several beta plugins at Navigate ’16, the company’s Identity Governance Conference held in Austin this week. The Identity+ Alliance, which aims to partner with vendors to increase awareness of and access to IAM extensions, enables technology vendors to develop and test their own integrations with SailPoint offerings, using SDKs with standard APIs like SQL, SCIM and REST plus developer support and cloud-based certification testing with SailPoint products. The Alliance will certify each plugin developed by partners so customers can be confident in using them. Examples of beta plugins showcased at Navigate ’16 include: