State consolidates 18 agencies into one simplified – and flexible - identity solution

[MUSIC PLAYING] EST Group has a long history of working with state and local government organizations, and we have a project that we have worked on with one of the state organizations that presented us with a unique problem-- tying together 18 agencies through one holistic solution. This state organization was facing a number of different challenges. They were mostly centered around the nature of their complexity, as well as how disparate most state organizations operate. This particular state organization had received a mandate to put in a holistic solution that would help them to bring their agencies together to be able to work under a single framework. The process that we used is our traditional assessment process-- coming in and walking beside the customer to understand their specific needs. We ended up recommending Identity Manager, Password Manager, and Active Roles Server, because they would solve some of their more immediate issues. In later months, we would go in to position Safeguard as well as Starling to solve some of the other issues that they were coming upon at the various agencies. This created some efficiencies for them, in that they could create uniqueness among all of their state employees in terms of their access, in terms of their users, in terms of their domains. It also created some efficiencies in terms of a buying vehicle, in that they could now have access to be able to bring in new buying organizations and be able to purchase from those through a single source. They were able to create a centralized identity repository of all state employees, as well as contractors, at the information technology level. This allowed for them to be able to identify each employee and contractor that was inside the organization and then be able to provision that identity down to the layers of the agencies themselves. Once at that agency layer, inside of this multi-tiered architecture, the agency then could augment that user in whatever way they want, as well as provision that user out to their own applications. One of the reasons that this state organization really enjoyed working with EST Group and we enjoyed working with them is because they indicated that we ask the why questions. Why does this happen? Why does that happen? Why are you doing it this way? So that we can understand better about what our customer needs are. That helped us with our approach with the state organization, and it helped us to be successful with our projects with them.