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Tribute to Our Favorite Identity Innovators

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Spring is a wonderful season to reflect on new changes and beginnings. World Identity Management Day could not have found a better date to be honored than on April 12, but as we take a look back on the progression of the industry as a whole, it’s also significant to recognize members of our very own leadership team who have significantly shaped the identity management industry and brought us innovations in technology and identity services.

Get to know some of our board directors and company leaders, as well as the transformational impacts they have made on the identity and access management industry since the late 1990’s. You may even give yourself a walk-down memory lane in the identity space.

 

Kevin Cunningham

Kevin Cunningham, a core executive in identity giants such as Waveset, Sun Microsystems, and SailPoint, has been a visionary and innovator in identity management for over 20 years. He played a key role in innovating process automation into user administration – as it was called for decades. He co-founded Waveset with Mark McClain, Mike Turner and Bill Kennedy where they transformed user administration from a rudimentary and labor-intensive process by infusing it massive efficiency and effectiveness.

Kevin and the Waveset team’s mission was to help employees, partners, and customers gain access to what they needed, it also ensured the decommissioning of that access when required, thus adding the element of enterprise security to the discipline of managing the entire lifecycle of users and their access needs.

In 2003, Kevin went on to co-found SailPoint with Mark McClain and Jackie Gilbert. There they drove the third generation of identity management innovation. SailPoint took the concept of process-driven identity management to the next level by closely integrating business compliance and security requirements to user access realities.

“Through the detailed understanding of business roles within the ecosystem of an organizations’ employee and partner relationships, SailPoint was able to provide the industry’s most sophisticated and accurate solution to demonstrating regulatory compliance for user access to sensitive data while at the same time fully automating the creation and decommissioning of access in near real-time,” he explains. “The result was an entirely new form of identity management that came to be known as Identity Governance.”

Today, these innovations equip organizations to protect themselves against the growing threat of security breaches that is unprecedented in history. Through his leadership, foresight, and undying drive for innovation, Kevin has shaped the evolution of identity management from basic user administration to sophisticated identity intelligence resulting in a multi-billion-dollar industry. Having Kevin on our board is an honor and we’re excited to have his insights available as we help SailPoint customers transform their identity management strategies for what lies ahead.

 

Mike Turner

As one of the founders of Waveset and a systems management visionary from Tivoli in the 1990s, Mike Turner has seen it all. He worked on Primary Resource Management, User Administration and ultimately led the development of user provisioning from Waveset. As the category was being created, identity theft was increasing. This led Mike and the Waveset team to the idea of naming the technology category and offering “Identity Management.”

Mike was responsible for a key technology decision: to go “agentless” and to index identities with an innovation called the Virtual Identity Manager rather than make a copy of the identities. These were precursors to where we are today in a cloud-based, BYOE world.

“I’m focused on what’s next and I believe that the dark web identity trade is a continuous threat in much the same way cybersecurity is in times of war.— people are stealing the keys to access the holes in our security fabric. So, identity management and identity governance are as critical as ever, as is innovation in identity,” he says. “There are real threats to the world’s critical infrastructure and we must find a way to monitor and quickly remediate any potentially rogue access.”  Mike’s contribution as a member of Regatta’s board provides incredible insight into both the technology and overall security industry for our team and, ultimately, clients.

 

John Ciulla

John Ciulla, Regatta’s founder, started as a CIO implementing Waveset, the leading user provisioning solution in the early 2000s. This experience gave him a firsthand look at the challenges from an enterprise customers’ perspective around identity management.

He soon took the helm at Neogent, a professional services and integrator firm allowing him to help organizations reduce the time it took for SailPoint deployments and to find innovative ways to make IAM repeatable and predictable. Now, at Regatta, John remains focused on accelerating time to value but also has a unique view of an IAM integrator to ultimately help internal IT and security teams be self-sufficient in the oversight and management of their IAM platform. This insight and experience ultimately helps clients to reduce the need for ongoing expensive consultative services. 

“The most important considerations when choosing an integrator are quality of service and implementation experience. Having certified architects and engineers who have performed hundreds of implementations and integrations in all industries. It’s important to have seen all the ways things can go wrong and know where to watch for potential missteps or future complications,” John explains “Experienced integrators can help provide a path to deployment success for anyone who is trying to see an ROI on their enterprise IAM program by building identity factories, leveraging AI, and moving IAM to the cloud.” Our thoughts exactly, John! We are confident thatJohn’s leadership and focus will make the greatest impact in the shortest amount of time for our clients.

 

 

Dave Randall

Dave Randall brings over 20 years of experience in the Identity industry and was the leader of SailPoint Professional Services from 2007 to 2020. He wholeheartedly believes that identity is at the center of everything for everyone. When he started his career in identity management at Waveset, he had no idea that identity management would be as pervasive as it is today.

He saw the transition of IAM from serving as the plumbing for IT operations providing key user administrative functions to truly enabling security and adding better governance overall.

Today, Dave believes that identity is all about being completely seamless to the end user with SSO to CIAM being a core service. He also acknowledges that the emergence of AI is helping to take the risk out of easy when it comes to  identity management.

“IAM implementations are changing with the acceleration of the digital transformation over the past two years,” Dave believes. “Organizations were forced to make remote work secure. And now, it’s truly a BYOE world. As everything moves to the cloud and organizations move to SaaS IAM offerings, the skillsets of the teams deploying IAM projects must evolve. I believe that the implementers and IAM consultants must have more of a business sense to complement their technical skills to effectively integrate key processes and information into the flow of identity overall.” We are thrilled to have Dave on the team with his incredible SailPoint experience and what he can help our clients to quickly achieve.

Another Year in the Evolution of Identity

It doesn’t take highlighting these great identity innovators to see that a lot has changed in the world of identity and access management in the last 20 years. However, if you are embarking on a new IAM program or find yourself in need of some guidance on how to steer your existing program in the right direction, the Regatta Solutions Group team has the depth and breadth of experience to ensure your program delivers the right access, to the right resources, while helping to expedite an industry-leading ROI.

Contact us to start the conversation about your specific IAM needs and how we can help enable you in any phase of your implementation.

Spring is a wonderful season to reflect on new changes and beginnings. World Identity Management Day could not have found a better date to be honored than on April 12, but as we take a look back on the progression of the industry as a whole, it’s also significant to recognize members of our very own leadership team who have significantly shaped the identity management industry and brought us innovations in technology and identity services.

Get to know some of our board directors and company leaders, as well as the transformational impacts they have made on the identity and access management industry since the late 1990’s. You may even give yourself a walk-down memory lane in the identity space.

 

Kevin Cunningham

Kevin Cunningham, a core executive in identity giants such as Waveset, Sun Microsystems, and SailPoint, has been a visionary and innovator in identity management for over 20 years. He played a key role in innovating process automation into user administration – as it was called for decades. He co-founded Waveset with Mark McClain, Mike Turner and Bill Kennedy where they transformed user administration from a rudimentary and labor-intensive process by infusing it massive efficiency and effectiveness.

Kevin and the Waveset team’s mission was to help employees, partners, and customers gain access to what they needed, it also ensured the decommissioning of that access when required, thus adding the element of enterprise security to the discipline of managing the entire lifecycle of users and their access needs.

In 2003, Kevin went on to co-found SailPoint with Mark McClain and Jackie Gilbert. There they drove the third generation of identity management innovation. SailPoint took the concept of process-driven identity management to the next level by closely integrating business compliance and security requirements to user access realities.

“Through the detailed understanding of business roles within the ecosystem of an organizations’ employee and partner relationships, SailPoint was able to provide the industry’s most sophisticated and accurate solution to demonstrating regulatory compliance for user access to sensitive data while at the same time fully automating the creation and decommissioning of access in near real-time,” he explains. “The result was an entirely new form of identity management that came to be known as Identity Governance.”

Today, these innovations equip organizations to protect themselves against the growing threat of security breaches that is unprecedented in history. Through his leadership, foresight, and undying drive for innovation, Kevin has shaped the evolution of identity management from basic user administration to sophisticated identity intelligence resulting in a multi-billion-dollar industry. Having Kevin on our board is an honor and we’re excited to have his insights available as we help SailPoint customers transform their identity management strategies for what lies ahead.

 

Mike Turner

As one of the founders of Waveset and a systems management visionary from Tivoli in the 1990s, Mike Turner has seen it all. He worked on Primary Resource Management, User Administration and ultimately led the development of user provisioning from Waveset. As the category was being created, identity theft was increasing. This led Mike and the Waveset team to the idea of naming the technology category and offering “Identity Management.”

Mike was responsible for a key technology decision: to go “agentless” and to index identities with an innovation called the Virtual Identity Manager rather than make a copy of the identities. These were precursors to where we are today in a cloud-based, BYOE world.

“I’m focused on what’s next and I believe that the dark web identity trade is a continuous threat in much the same way cybersecurity is in times of war.— people are stealing the keys to access the holes in our security fabric. So, identity management and identity governance are as critical as ever, as is innovation in identity,” he says. “There are real threats to the world’s critical infrastructure and we must find a way to monitor and quickly remediate any potentially rogue access.”  Mike’s contribution as a member of Regatta’s board provides incredible insight into both the technology and overall security industry for our team and, ultimately, clients.

 

John Ciulla

John Ciulla, Regatta’s founder, started as a CIO implementing Waveset, the leading user provisioning solution in the early 2000s. This experience gave him a firsthand look at the challenges from an enterprise customers’ perspective around identity management.

He soon took the helm at Neogent, a professional services and integrator firm allowing him to help organizations reduce the time it took for SailPoint deployments and to find innovative ways to make IAM repeatable and predictable. Now, at Regatta, John remains focused on accelerating time to value but also has a unique view of an IAM integrator to ultimately help internal IT and security teams be self-sufficient in the oversight and management of their IAM platform. This insight and experience ultimately helps clients to reduce the need for ongoing expensive consultative services. 

“The most important considerations when choosing an integrator are quality of service and implementation experience. Having certified architects and engineers who have performed hundreds of implementations and integrations in all industries. It’s important to have seen all the ways things can go wrong and know where to watch for potential missteps or future complications,” John explains “Experienced integrators can help provide a path to deployment success for anyone who is trying to see an ROI on their enterprise IAM program by building identity factories, leveraging AI, and moving IAM to the cloud.” Our thoughts exactly, John! We are confident thatJohn’s leadership and focus will make the greatest impact in the shortest amount of time for our clients.

 

 

Dave Randall

Dave Randall brings over 20 years of experience in the Identity industry and was the leader of SailPoint Professional Services from 2007 to 2020. He wholeheartedly believes that identity is at the center of everything for everyone. When he started his career in identity management at Waveset, he had no idea that identity management would be as pervasive as it is today.

He saw the transition of IAM from serving as the plumbing for IT operations providing key user administrative functions to truly enabling security and adding better governance overall.

Today, Dave believes that identity is all about being completely seamless to the end user with SSO to CIAM being a core service. He also acknowledges that the emergence of AI is helping to take the risk out of easy when it comes to  identity management.

“IAM implementations are changing with the acceleration of the digital transformation over the past two years,” Dave believes. “Organizations were forced to make remote work secure. And now, it’s truly a BYOE world. As everything moves to the cloud and organizations move to SaaS IAM offerings, the skillsets of the teams deploying IAM projects must evolve. I believe that the implementers and IAM consultants must have more of a business sense to complement their technical skills to effectively integrate key processes and information into the flow of identity overall.” We are thrilled to have Dave on the team with his incredible SailPoint experience and what he can help our clients to quickly achieve.

Another Year in the Evolution of Identity

It doesn’t take highlighting these great identity innovators to see that a lot has changed in the world of identity and access management in the last 20 years. However, if you are embarking on a new IAM program or find yourself in need of some guidance on how to steer your existing program in the right direction, the Regatta Solutions Group team has the depth and breadth of experience to ensure your program delivers the right access, to the right resources, while helping to expedite an industry-leading ROI.

Contact us to start the conversation about your specific IAM needs and how we can help enable you in any phase of your implementation.

Navigate a Winning Identity Strategy

Securing the enterprise goes beyond selecting the software. Talk to the SailPoint experts at Regatta to discuss your personalized roadmap for a successful identity program.