Ninety-five percent of those companies are focused on Fortune 1000 customers, CEO Patrick Morley told ComputerWire. The problem is that the vast mid-market has the same problems and no solutions at the moment.

The problem is that users have multiple passwords for multiple applications and have to log on multiple times during a day’s work. This often leads to security issues, as users choose weak easily remembered passwords or write their passwords down.

Imprivata’s answer is an appliance-based system with a client component that does most of the hard work. Morley said the consulting and deployment time can be measured in hours or days rather than weeks or months, keeping costs down.

The system, OneSign, has a server component that grabs user identities from standard corporate directories, and is used to store instructions about how users interact with the authentication mechanisms of their applications.

During set-up, a client component observes as a user logs into an application, and remembers the rules and the password for that login. This information is stored as an XML document on the appliance,

The XML document is retrieved every time a user logs into the system, and is stored in a local sandbox used by the SSO client to proxy for the login system of each application for which it has been configured.

This architecture, and the fact that a separate directory is not needed, reduces the need for complex and lengthy integration work, Morley said, which keeps costs down. OneSign sells for between $16,000 for 200 users to $80,000 for 5,000 users.

Imprivata has about 30 beta customers, and thinks it has an early mover advantage. High-end SSO providers will be hard pressed to adapt their offerings, which often require consultation work, to the mid-market, Morley said.

When we look at the market, we’ve got an advantage right now. We’ve got to grab market share as quickly as possible, said Morley, indicating likely competitive pressure from Netegrity and others, because those guys are coming down here.

Source: Computerwire