Identity Orchestration: Simplifying Multi-Cloud Identity Management
In this episode, W. Curtis Preston and Prasanna Malaiyandi are joined by Eric Olden, the CEO of Strata Identity. With over 25 years of experience in the cybersecurity industry, Eric sheds light on the concept of Identity Orchestration and how it addresses the complexities of modern identity management in multi-cloud environments. He discusses the evolution of technology consumption, the philosophy of "bought not sold," and the creation of a new product category in the world of identity management. Eric explains how Strata Identity's platform acts as an abstraction layer, allowing organizations to seamlessly integrate and switch between different identity providers without rewriting applications. He also shares insights on modernization, just-in-time provisioning, and the benefits of the open free IDQL standard. Don't miss this engaging discussion about identity orchestration and its role in simplifying the management of identities across diverse cloud ecosystems.
Mentioned in this episode:
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Do you seem to care more about your organization's backup and
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recovery system than anybody else?
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This is the podcast for you, and we've got another great episode this week.
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Regular listeners.
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Hear me harp a lot about the security of their backup and recovery system.
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There's nothing more crucial to that than having a good identity
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authentication and authorization system.
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We've got an expert and identity orchestration here this week to help
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us understand this important concept.
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I learned a lot.
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I hope you will too.
W. Curtis Preston:
hi, and welcome to Backup Central's Restored All podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:
I'm your host, w Curtis Preston, a k a, Mr.
W. Curtis Preston:
Backup.
W. Curtis Preston:
And I have with me a guy who, honestly, I'm not sure why we're friends.
W. Curtis Preston:
Uh, Prasanna Malaiyandi
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
hey, now what?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
What, what did I do this time?
W. Curtis Preston:
No, it's the whole, it's the whole movie thing.
W. Curtis Preston:
So like, you know, like how, how, like you're so not.
W. Curtis Preston:
Like a person who goes to movies, and I am so a person who goes to movies, I'm
W. Curtis Preston:
like, like, what do we even talk about?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Well, I think what ends up happening is you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
explain what goes on in movies.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I sit there and listen to it with the plan of never
W. Curtis Preston:
yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:
So you're, so, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:
So you're watching, you're watching movies vicariously through me.
W. Curtis Preston:
Um, and just to, just to.
W. Curtis Preston:
Illustrate just how much of a goofy movie fanatic I am.
W. Curtis Preston:
I am as of a few minutes ago.
W. Curtis Preston:
I am now what some people are referring to as a Barbenheimer.
W. Curtis Preston:
do, do you know what a Barbenheimer is?
W. Curtis Preston:
Prasanna.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Nope.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
What's a Barbenheimer?
W. Curtis Preston:
So it is, uh, there is next weekend or this
W. Curtis Preston:
weekend there is the upcoming dual.
W. Curtis Preston:
Uh, we have two big movie premieres this weekend, both the Barbie movie, which when
W. Curtis Preston:
I first heard of it, I'm like, that does not sound like a movie that I wanna watch.
W. Curtis Preston:
But based on the previews and the actors and whatnot it sent out,
W. Curtis Preston:
I said, you know what, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go see this movie.
W. Curtis Preston:
And also Oppenheimer, I.
W. Curtis Preston:
Which I cannot think of a movie more opposite than, uh, the Barbie
W. Curtis Preston:
movie, the with Oppenheimer, which is the story of the, the guy behind
W. Curtis Preston:
the creation of the atomic bomb.
W. Curtis Preston:
And they're saying that, you know, it's a three hour emotionally draining
W. Curtis Preston:
according to reviews or whatnot.
W. Curtis Preston:
It's a three hour thing.
W. Curtis Preston:
What I wanted to do, and so and so, Barbenheimer, are those
W. Curtis Preston:
of us who have signed up to see these movies back to back.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Oh, good Lord
W. Curtis Preston:
On, on, on the release date.
W. Curtis Preston:
So I will be seeing the first showing of both of these movies in San Diego.
W. Curtis Preston:
I'll be seeing, so next Thursday, I'll be seeing the Barbie movie at 3:00 PM
W. Curtis Preston:
and based on its runtime, it should finish, you know, with credits it should
W. Curtis Preston:
finish at, at like, Like, including, it's, it's the, the, what do you call
W. Curtis Preston:
it, not trailers, what the, the credits.
W. Curtis Preston:
Right.
W. Curtis Preston:
Including the trailers in the front and the credits in the back.
W. Curtis Preston:
It will finish at 5:20 PM and so if I take like five minutes for not
W. Curtis Preston:
watching the credits, I can then run over to the 5:00 PM showing.
W. Curtis Preston:
Um, of, of Oppenheimer where the, where the, the trailer should still be running.
W. Curtis Preston:
Uh, and then I'll just find my seat.
W. Curtis Preston:
And what I wanna know is I wanna see how many people do that.
W. Curtis Preston:
Uh, what I, what I wanted to do is I want Go ahead.
W. Curtis Preston:
Go ahead, please.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I was, I was wondering why you did it in that order
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
rather than the reverse, given that.
W. Curtis Preston:
That's, that's what I was just about to say.
W. Curtis Preston:
I wanted to see Oppenheimer and then in tears go watch, um, the Barbie movie.
W. Curtis Preston:
It is not possible.
W. Curtis Preston:
It reminds me, actually.
W. Curtis Preston:
So I live in Oceanside, California, and you have the Metrolink trains that go to
W. Curtis Preston:
LA and you have this, the, the, uh, San Diego coaster that goes to San Diego.
W. Curtis Preston:
You can't take the trains.
W. Curtis Preston:
Either way, you can't, you can't get on a, on a Metrolink train and then land and
W. Curtis Preston:
then get on a, a coaster train and go to San Diego, um, because they specifically
W. Curtis Preston:
put the time so that that doesn't work.
W. Curtis Preston:
And that's exactly what happened with Oppenheimer.
W. Curtis Preston:
Um, and also this way I'm seeing the firsts showing of both.
W. Curtis Preston:
So I'm with, you know, the true fans, you know, the true
W. Curtis Preston:
fans, uh, the true Barbie fans.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I was just gonna ask, so you are going by yourself.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You're not taking your granddaughter, you're going by yourself
W. Curtis Preston:
N no, no.
W. Curtis Preston:
I'm going by myself to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
to the Barbie movie.
W. Curtis Preston:
Uhhuh.
W. Curtis Preston:
Have you seen any of the previews though?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
have not.
W. Curtis Preston:
I, I, I, I, I don't think I would
W. Curtis Preston:
probably take Lily to go see it.
W. Curtis Preston:
Well, I would definitely not take Lily to go see it before I go see
W. Curtis Preston:
it first 'cause she's only 10.
W. Curtis Preston:
Uh, and I think there's probably gonna be some stuff in there that's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Is it PG 13?
W. Curtis Preston:
old.
W. Curtis Preston:
I, I, I, I, I think it might be, um, I know it's not g
W. Curtis Preston:
I know it's not G for sure.
W. Curtis Preston:
I don't even know if they make G movies anymore, but yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:
So this is what I'm talking about for those of us, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:
And the times just don't work out.
W. Curtis Preston:
So like if in order to see the Oppenheimer and then Barbie, you have to have this
W. Curtis Preston:
big, um, delay in between the two.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:
and you can use a delay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:
Go eat dinner.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:
Take a nap.
W. Curtis Preston:
Well, you, you know me, I'm
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I know you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah, exactly.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Killing me.
W. Curtis Preston:
I'm gonna bring our guest on today.
W. Curtis Preston:
He has been in the cybersecurity industry for over 25 years and is
W. Curtis Preston:
now the c e O of Strata Identity and Identity Orchestration Company.
W. Curtis Preston:
You can find them@strata.io.
W. Curtis Preston:
Welcome to the pod Eric Olden
Eric Olden:
Nice.
Eric Olden:
Thanks for having me.
Eric Olden:
I'm looking forward to it, uh, the conversation and, uh, I'm looking
Eric Olden:
forward to, to the movies as well.
Eric Olden:
You, you've got my interest piqued and when you were talking about
Eric Olden:
the, the mashup, I was, yeah, Barbenheimer, that's, it's gotta
Eric Olden:
be a one heck of a mashup, but I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Was Eric looking for tickets?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Were you looking up tickets while Curtis and I were talking?
W. Curtis Preston:
Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:
It's, um, right now if you get your tickets, now you, you get
W. Curtis Preston:
your choice of seats, right?
W. Curtis Preston:
Um, although with Oppenheimer it was pretty full.
W. Curtis Preston:
It was, uh, uh, but, um, and today I saw, actually saw Mission Impossible today.
W. Curtis Preston:
Or Yeah, I'm sorry.
W. Curtis Preston:
That was yesterday.
W. Curtis Preston:
I saw Mission Impossible yesterday, by the way.
W. Curtis Preston:
Amazing movie.
W. Curtis Preston:
That guy.
W. Curtis Preston:
Uh, that movie's just over the top.
W. Curtis Preston:
Gotta see that movie and gotta see it on a big screen as big a screen as you can.
W. Curtis Preston:
I think if, if there's ever a movie that's meant to be seen on a big screen,
W. Curtis Preston:
it's the Mission Impossible movie.
W. Curtis Preston:
Anyway, but you know what we have to start with, uh, Eric, uh, is, is I need to know
W. Curtis Preston:
the story behind, uh, bought Not Sold,
Eric Olden:
Ah, yes.
Eric Olden:
Why not sold?
Eric Olden:
Uh,
W. Curtis Preston:
both your Twitter handle and your,
W. Curtis Preston:
um, your LinkedIn identity.
Eric Olden:
Yeah, and I own the, the domain boughtnotsold.com.
Eric Olden:
So the full set.
Eric Olden:
Uh, so I guess the short of it is that, you know, I've been in, uh, technology
Eric Olden:
sales and software development and all that for over 25 years, and I've seen
Eric Olden:
this kind of evolution of the way that.
Eric Olden:
You know, people consume technology and you think about that, people talk
Eric Olden:
often about the consumerization of technology and the move to the cloud and
Eric Olden:
things like that are accelerating that.
Eric Olden:
But if you think about the experience that, um, people go through when
Eric Olden:
they're trying to solve a problem, I.
Eric Olden:
I've yet to meet anyone who says, oh, please call me and sell me something.
Eric Olden:
But people need to buy things.
Eric Olden:
And so if you flip that general relationship 180 degrees and you
Eric Olden:
help people buy things and not sell things to them, it sounds
Eric Olden:
like a semantic difference.
Eric Olden:
But it's a world of difference when, um, applied correctly because, um, And you
Eric Olden:
think about the whole process of figuring out a solution and you wanna do your
Eric Olden:
research and you're gonna get onto Google and you're gonna do all of the content and
Eric Olden:
consume all of the videos and everything that goes into making a decision.
Eric Olden:
And I like to think of setting things up so that people have a great
Eric Olden:
experience going through that on their own and lead them to a conclusion.
Eric Olden:
Let them make a decision, and that's bought not sold.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I like it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah, it, it, it, having worked at some companies in the past, I think
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
sometimes those companies, when they sell to enterprises, they would
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
talk about sort of being like a trusted partner or a trusted advisor.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But I like what you're talking about Eric, which is going even beyond that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and sort of allowing the end user to be that sort of self-sufficient, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Find what they need, figure it out, go on the journey, but give
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
them the information they need in order to come to that conclusion.
Eric Olden:
Exactly, you're, you're exactly right.
Eric Olden:
Prasanna and, and on Strata io, the website.
Eric Olden:
Um, for four years we have not gated our content.
Eric Olden:
So a lot of times people, you say, oh, I'm interested.
Eric Olden:
I wanna read that white paper.
Eric Olden:
I want to get this report, and I don't want to have that spam
Eric Olden:
when I give my email or someone's gonna harass me on the phone.
Eric Olden:
Uh, instead we just say, Hey, look, the content, if it's good, is gonna teach
Eric Olden:
people and educate them, and educated people make decisions more quickly and
Eric Olden:
they're more confident in their decision.
Eric Olden:
I.
Eric Olden:
Therefore they spend more money and they, they, you know, make a bigger investment.
Eric Olden:
So, um, I realize I'm giving away all my secrets here, guys, so, uh, but that's
Eric Olden:
how it works in, in practice though.
Eric Olden:
Just let, just give the good content out there.
Eric Olden:
Don't have people, uh, feel like they're obligated.
Eric Olden:
Uh, and if it's really good content, you know what you're
Eric Olden:
doing, uh, it should come through.
Eric Olden:
And then people want to buy from the person that educates
Eric Olden:
them and treats them the best.
Eric Olden:
So that's kind of, uh, applied.
W. Curtis Preston:
So I guess you would, you would have a, a, a call to action,
W. Curtis Preston:
I suppose, in the content somewhere basically saying, Hey, if, if you
W. Curtis Preston:
found this helpful, then, then go here.
W. Curtis Preston:
Is that, is that the idea?
Eric Olden:
Yeah, that's the idea.
Eric Olden:
And you know, we have a self-service product, so if
Eric Olden:
someone says, oh, that seems cool.
Eric Olden:
What is this identity orchestration thing?
Eric Olden:
Let me try it out.
Eric Olden:
And then, Couple clicks, you're in the product.
Eric Olden:
Again, it's all free to start.
Eric Olden:
And, um, you can just see if it works and if it does, you know, people love it.
Eric Olden:
And, um, you know, it's been a nice way to align us with our customers and,
Eric Olden:
and get the friction out of the way.
Eric Olden:
So, but it's, it is pretty radical when we bring in new,
Eric Olden:
uh, people on the sales team.
Eric Olden:
We say, look, don't, um, don't spam.
Eric Olden:
We don't send unsolicited emails.
Eric Olden:
From marketing, people are like, well, how do you do it?
Eric Olden:
You say, well, you be patient and they'll come to you if you, you
Eric Olden:
know, build into this content model.
Eric Olden:
And so, uh, it, it has been great.
Eric Olden:
It's been wonderful for us.
Eric Olden:
We've been really happy with it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
No, I like that transparency aspect.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Now, do you also provide transparency in pricing?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Because I know some vendors, right, they're like, Hey, by the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
way, if you need more information, give us your email address.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Or call a person.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Do you also provide sort of that transparency on your website?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I.
Eric Olden:
Yeah, all the pricing's right there give a little pricing calculator
Eric Olden:
and um, we take that even further.
Eric Olden:
The whole idea of consumption based pricing, I think that's
Eric Olden:
another aspect of the bot not sold.
Eric Olden:
Concept is that if it works, you're gonna buy more of it.
Eric Olden:
So yeah, I've always felt like when people are saying, Hey, go whatever the,
Eric Olden:
the thing may be you're buying something that costs a million dollars and you
Eric Olden:
gotta make a million dollar decision that's more risky and stressful than if
Eric Olden:
you say, Hey, let's just do 10% of that a hundred thousand dollars decision.
Eric Olden:
Or 10,000, whatever is appropriate, and let the product prove itself out.
Eric Olden:
And then people will use it more.
Eric Olden:
And the more they use it, the more value they get out of it.
Eric Olden:
So the more willing they are to pay more for it.
Eric Olden:
And so everybody wins, but it is a bit unusual.
Eric Olden:
It all, uh, relies on that transparency.
W. Curtis Preston:
Yeah, and I, I, I think that would also qualify.
W. Curtis Preston:
Would you call yourselves a P L G company as well?
Eric Olden:
Yeah, we, we, we do consider ourselves a hybrid because
Eric Olden:
we have the full self-service p l g, front to end, and you can do all
Eric Olden:
of it without ever talking to us.
Eric Olden:
But we are in the enterprise, so a lot of the stuff that we do,
Eric Olden:
there's more complexity and so people want to be able to, um, Get expert
Eric Olden:
advice in kind of a consulting way.
Eric Olden:
And so we, we offer that as well.
Eric Olden:
So it's a, a hybrid model and um, but it's all based on that whole bot not sold idea.
Eric Olden:
So, you know, our goal is to be no, no pushy anything because, um,
Eric Olden:
You know, if it works, that that's the kind of, what's the saying?
Eric Olden:
The product will prove itself out and no product sells itself.
Eric Olden:
But I think you can have the product prove itself out and that, I think
Eric Olden:
is the, is a big win for everybody.
Eric Olden:
I.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Curtis,
W. Curtis Preston:
way, I, I have to, yeah, I was, I, I have to define p l
W. Curtis Preston:
G as product-led growth, which is a way to, to build a company and, uh,
W. Curtis Preston:
Prasanna, I, I bet you're gonna ask me about the, the disclaimer, aren't you?
W. Curtis Preston:
Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:
Alright.
W. Curtis Preston:
So, uh, throughout our usual disclaimer, uh, Prasanna and I work
W. Curtis Preston:
for different companies and, uh, we're not representing either of them here.
W. Curtis Preston:
This is an independent podcast and, uh, the opinions that you hear are ours.
W. Curtis Preston:
Also, if you like us, rate us.
W. Curtis Preston:
If you hate us, don't rate us.
W. Curtis Preston:
Um, and, um, the, uh, uh, and then, um, uh, if you wanna reach, if you wanna
W. Curtis Preston:
be part of the conversation, just reach out to me at WC Preston on Twitter
W. Curtis Preston:
or, uh, w Curtis Preston at gmail.
W. Curtis Preston:
And as of like two or three days ago, w Curtis Preston on Threads.
W. Curtis Preston:
Um, and, uh, I wish you all the best results over there.
W. Curtis Preston:
Uh, at the, you know, the, the latest social media company.
W. Curtis Preston:
Uh, anyway, so Eric, um, uh, here's a really big question.
W. Curtis Preston:
What is identity orchestration?
Eric Olden:
Yeah, great question.
Eric Olden:
Um, identity orchestration is, um, I'll kind of break those terms down.
Eric Olden:
Identity management, which is the way that users access applications and data.
Eric Olden:
And everything that goes around that.
Eric Olden:
And the orchestration side is think about automating, uh, different
Eric Olden:
flows or multi-step, uh, situations.
Eric Olden:
Where this is, uh, useful is in multi-cloud, and the typical situation
Eric Olden:
that we see is that an organization has a, uh, on-premises private cloud.
Eric Olden:
They've got their data center, they've been running for some time.
Eric Olden:
And they're at some point in their cloud journey where they've
Eric Olden:
got one or more public clouds.
Eric Olden:
And when you've got different places where your workloads run, you've got
Eric Olden:
different identity providers or IDPs, so they're built into the cloud.
Eric Olden:
So on Amazon you have a W Ss Kognito on Azure, you've got Azure
Eric Olden:
Active Directory on premises.
Eric Olden:
You've got things like Oracle and SiteMinder and uh, things
Eric Olden:
of that type active directory.
Eric Olden:
So when you start to think about how do we make all of these things work together,
Eric Olden:
that's where you need to do two things.
Eric Olden:
One, integrate everything.
Eric Olden:
And we call that an identity fabric.
Eric Olden:
And you can think about that as an abstraction layer that
Eric Olden:
makes everything work together.
Eric Olden:
And the second part is the orchestration.
Eric Olden:
So you think about what we've done in computing.
Eric Olden:
With Kubernetes and virtualization over time, you had more and more
Eric Olden:
abstraction away from the hardware.
Eric Olden:
So today we talk about containers and Kubernetes and
Eric Olden:
moving into serverless, right?
Eric Olden:
All of those are strata of abstraction.
Eric Olden:
We applied that same thinking to identity management and said, look, instead of
Eric Olden:
thinking about and being locked into any one identity provider, What if you can
Eric Olden:
abstract them and then allow you to mix and match what identity systems make sense
Eric Olden:
for your risk profile or your compliance or your, uh, management requirements.
Eric Olden:
So it's a brand new category.
Eric Olden:
Um, we started this in 2019.
Eric Olden:
We shipped a product, uh, our product's called Mavericks, and uh, it's the
Eric Olden:
first identity orchestration platform.
Eric Olden:
And.
Eric Olden:
We think about building the VMware of identity, and that's what,
Eric Olden:
uh, identity orchestration is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
No, that's pretty awesome, especially given how complex
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
some of these environments are and people wanting to not be locked in.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That's one of the biggest challenges is once you start using like Microsoft
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
from On-Premises and you, you're like, oh, now just use Azure, but maybe
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Azure isn't the best option for you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Maybe you do want use a w S.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Do you also help?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Make it easy for people so they don't need to understand all the underlying
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
complexities of say A W Ss or Azure and active directory instances There.
Eric Olden:
Yeah, absolutely.
Eric Olden:
And, and that's the role of the abstraction layer.
Eric Olden:
Uh, it, it integrates with all of the proprietary, uh, APIs of
Eric Olden:
the various systems and these.
Eric Olden:
Application programming interfaces.
Eric Olden:
The, the way that you communicate with software, um, think about
Eric Olden:
those in a metaphor of like, they're all in different languages.
Eric Olden:
Some are in Spanish, some are in Japanese, some are in, um, uh, Korean.
Eric Olden:
And instead of trying to learn all of these different languages, the abstraction
Eric Olden:
layer is kind of a universal language translation, so that it handles the
Eric Olden:
translation of one thing into the other.
Eric Olden:
So that the application doesn't have to, and that means that the, on the
Eric Olden:
application side of the abstraction layer, what it's seeing is effectively
Eric Olden:
a facade of what it expects to look at.
Eric Olden:
If it was originally communicating with Oracle, for instance, and you want to
Eric Olden:
switch out Oracle for Okta in the cloud, Well, the abstraction layer would have
Eric Olden:
the application talking to it using whatever protocol is already working.
Eric Olden:
So like things like, uh, SAML or security assertion, markup language
Eric Olden:
and Open ID Connect, or O I D C or some of the old school products that
Eric Olden:
use cookies and um, H T T P headers.
Eric Olden:
So all of these different ways that applications consume identity.
Eric Olden:
Are universally managed by that abstraction layer.
Eric Olden:
And why that's important is that you don't wanna rewrite your application to
Eric Olden:
have it work with a different identity provider because that's expensive.
Eric Olden:
It takes a long time, and there's a lot of cases where you just can't do it because
Eric Olden:
maybe it's a packaged to application, you don't have the source code to.
Eric Olden:
So this approach of identity orchestration allows you to swap out and mix and
Eric Olden:
match the different identity providers.
Eric Olden:
On under the covers without ever rewriting the application.
Eric Olden:
So
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
like N
Eric Olden:
make it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah, it's like for file storage, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You had N F S as a protocol that anyone can switch out.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
As long as the vendor was supporting N F Ss, you were all good to go.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And just kind of going back and thinking, I know Curtis, we were
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
talking about movies earlier, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's kind of like what you guys have built is kind of like
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Babelfish for identity, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It allows you to translate between various languages, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And provide that same abstraction regardless of what the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
underlying identity provider is.
W. Curtis Preston:
Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:
Wh which led to, which is leading to my question, but you.
W. Curtis Preston:
I, I had a question and then you said something that made
W. Curtis Preston:
my question even harder.
W. Curtis Preston:
So, so it's sort of two questions in one.
W. Curtis Preston:
One is, um, how would you contrast this to something like Okta, what Okta does?
W. Curtis Preston:
And then in the middle of like, waiting to ask that question, you
W. Curtis Preston:
said you work with Okta, right?
W. Curtis Preston:
As an identity provider.
W. Curtis Preston:
Um, and so in that case it would seem like there's.
W. Curtis Preston:
Multiple layers between the actual application and, and the customer.
W. Curtis Preston:
So, so I was just a little, so there you go.
W. Curtis Preston:
That I don't know, I'm sure there's a question in there somewhere.
Eric Olden:
Well, that's a perfect hybrid question from the
Eric Olden:
Barb Inheimer, uh, school of.
W. Curtis Preston:
the, from the Barb Heimer.
W. Curtis Preston:
Absolutely.
W. Curtis Preston:
From the Heimer School of Questioning.
Eric Olden:
Yeah.
Eric Olden:
So, um, identity providers are, um, there's a lot of
Eric Olden:
good ones that are out there.
Eric Olden:
Okta's a good one.
Eric Olden:
Um, Microsoft does great stuff with Azure.
Eric Olden:
They're Azure products, Azure Active Directory.
Eric Olden:
You've got new ones.
Eric Olden:
You've got old ones, right?
Eric Olden:
So those are new ones.
Eric Olden:
Uh, things like hyper is a different way to do passwordless authentication.
Eric Olden:
And then you've got the old ones that are on-prem, typically the Oracles,
Eric Olden:
the cas, IBMs and things like that.
Eric Olden:
So, um, what an identity fabric is, it's an agnostic, vendor neutral way to
Eric Olden:
make all of your infrastructure work.
Eric Olden:
Together, right?
Eric Olden:
So we specialize in working with everybody so that our customers are
Eric Olden:
free to choose whatever they want.
Eric Olden:
And so we partner with all of the vendors.
Eric Olden:
We have a really broad platform that integrates with all of the major
Eric Olden:
technologies that are out there, and it's all in support of that no lock-in.
Eric Olden:
So the customers can say, Hey, you know, 'cause one of the things
Eric Olden:
that a lot of times, uh, identity.
Eric Olden:
Shows up in, in interesting ways is mergers and acquisitions and very
Eric Olden:
common situation where you could have one company who is a Microsoft shop
Eric Olden:
through and through, they acquire another company that's an Okta shop well.
Eric Olden:
Identity isn't one of those things that you can just turn a switch
Eric Olden:
on without some software, right?
Eric Olden:
And so you're gonna have a challenge because you've got two
Eric Olden:
different identity systems, two different vendors, and they weren't
Eric Olden:
engineered to work with one another.
Eric Olden:
So orchestration and the abstraction layer allows you to, um, basically mix and
Eric Olden:
match whatever you want so your employees from the original company can use their.
Eric Olden:
Uh, logins out of Azure, as well as the new employees from the acquired company.
Eric Olden:
They can use their login on Okta, and the abstraction layer
Eric Olden:
brings the two of them together.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So there, Curtis, that's why it's a new category
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
called Identity Orchestration.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Not
W. Curtis Preston:
Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:
Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:
I, I guess, I guess again, because I don't live in that world, Right.
W. Curtis Preston:
I, I was thinking this more like, like you said, like Okta being an, they're an
W. Curtis Preston:
identity provider and you're abstracting that, and so people could, and I get, is
W. Curtis Preston:
it common for customers to have multiple identity providers within, you know,
W. Curtis Preston:
obviously in an m and a situation, but I'm guessing there are other situations where
W. Curtis Preston:
they have an I D P that doesn't support.
W. Curtis Preston:
A particular part of their environment, and then you help solve that as well.
Eric Olden:
Yeah, exactly.
Eric Olden:
And so think about all of these proliferation of identity
Eric Olden:
providers on-prem, in the cloud, uh, acquisitions, divestitures.
Eric Olden:
So there's a lot of reasons why you're gonna have more than one today.
Eric Olden:
Um, and I think the, the way to think about it is similar
Eric Olden:
to, uh, virtualization.
Eric Olden:
And, you know, Pana, we were talking earlier about Silicon Valley and I grew
Eric Olden:
up, uh, driving on 1 0 1 from the South Bay to San Francisco, and I'd see all of
Eric Olden:
the tech companies on my way to school.
Eric Olden:
And what, um, over time, I mean, there was a point where the, the
Eric Olden:
big hardware companies, the server wars of the nineties, and, uh,
Eric Olden:
these people like Dell, these people like San other people like hp.
Eric Olden:
When's the last time people talk about hardware?
Eric Olden:
They don't because it's all now VMs and it's all cloud services.
Eric Olden:
So that's an example of how abstraction works.
Eric Olden:
And so you no longer need to think about whether you're running on uh, one
Eric Olden:
hardware provider or the other people.
Eric Olden:
Just think about a higher level of the concept of computing and say, well,
Eric Olden:
I've got a vm, or I've got a container.
Eric Olden:
And it doesn't matter what hardware runs on.
Eric Olden:
That's where identity is headed with orchestration is to say, look, stop
Eric Olden:
thinking about which of the identity providers that you're using, assume
Eric Olden:
you're gonna want to use more than one.
Eric Olden:
And once you have that capability, you can just do whatever you want, right?
Eric Olden:
You can just swap out different things for whatever use case that matters.
Eric Olden:
So really helps with complexity, fragmentation, and a situation
Eric Olden:
where you have many instead of one.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Could you talk, and I think you kind of touched on
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
it, could you talk about some of the.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Issues customers face when they have multiple identity providers
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and sort of why they really need this identity orchestration.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I know we talked about sort of being able to swap out things, but what
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
about some of the issues that customers can run into by trying to manage
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
multiple identity providers today?
Eric Olden:
Yeah, a, a very common thing is coexistence, and we see this all
Eric Olden:
the time where people have stuff that works on premises and they wanna move
Eric Olden:
to the cloud, and they've gotta have coexistence between the old and the new.
Eric Olden:
So that's a, pretty much everybody's got that problem.
Eric Olden:
Um, even if, say you're using Microsoft on both ends, active directory on-prem
Eric Olden:
does not work with Azure AD in the cloud marketing notwithstanding, right?
Eric Olden:
But the point is, is that you can, you have the situation all the time.
Eric Olden:
Uh, another problem that people run into are in very specialized areas of identity.
Eric Olden:
For instance, in, uh, multi-factor authentication or M F A.
Eric Olden:
Where people want to use a certain kind of, um, authentication
Eric Olden:
that doesn't rely on passwords.
Eric Olden:
Well, I think we've all seen the situation where maybe you're used to
Eric Olden:
using your biometric on your phone and well, you leave your phone in
Eric Olden:
the car, you still gotta log into your, your site, but you can't use a
Eric Olden:
password because that's not secure.
Eric Olden:
So what do you do in that case?
Eric Olden:
Well, that's actually a continuity resilience issue because if you're
Eric Olden:
thinking about the person who needs to do their job, they gotta get online.
Eric Olden:
Identity is a mission critical, if not one of the most important mission
Eric Olden:
critical things, because if identity and access management isn't in place,
Eric Olden:
you need to fail closed, right?
Eric Olden:
Can't let people in, otherwise it'd be chaos.
Eric Olden:
So what you need to think about with multiple identity providers is.
Eric Olden:
Hey, what do we do in the event that our primary identity provider isn't available?
Eric Olden:
How do we substitute that with a backup?
Eric Olden:
And so that could be, for instance, uh, I don't have my phone with
Eric Olden:
me, but I've got my key fob.
Eric Olden:
And so if I'm presented with an option to say, Hey, how do you wanna authenticate?
Eric Olden:
We don't use passwords here 'cause they're not secure.
Eric Olden:
We can give you a choice of your primary, is your phone.
Eric Olden:
And if you don't have your phone, your secondary could be this, you
Eric Olden:
know, one of the Fido keys that you plug into your, your computer.
Eric Olden:
So these are examples of problems that people have.
Eric Olden:
Resiliency and identity are actually very related.
Eric Olden:
So, uh, we see a lot of, a lot of that, um, as, as problems.
Eric Olden:
And I guess the last thing would be, Say you've got a great technology like
Eric Olden:
Passwordless and you wanna roll it out to all your applications and you've got
Eric Olden:
hundreds of applications to do it to.
Eric Olden:
Well, you wouldn't be able to do it very quickly if you had to rewrite
Eric Olden:
each of the applications to talk with this authentication mechanism.
Eric Olden:
So with an abstraction layer, you don't change the apps, you just
Eric Olden:
plug the authentication system into the fabric and everything
Eric Olden:
that's talking to the fabric and.
Eric Olden:
Connect with that without any coding or any, uh, modification.
Eric Olden:
So, uh, a lot of problems we call 'em recipes or use cases and, um, but yeah,
Eric Olden:
there's, there's a whole lot of different things that people are doing today.
Eric Olden:
I.
W. Curtis Preston:
So, um, another question.
W. Curtis Preston:
Um, so how does this work then?
W. Curtis Preston:
So I've got, let's say, Okta.
W. Curtis Preston:
Right.
W. Curtis Preston:
And, and then you on top of Okta, and I want m f a, um,
W. Curtis Preston:
so I'm interacting with you.
W. Curtis Preston:
I'm not interacting directly with Okta at this point, right?
W. Curtis Preston:
I'm interacting with your abstraction layer.
W. Curtis Preston:
So I want M F A and, and Okta is configured for M F a or
W. Curtis Preston:
how, how, how does that work?
W. Curtis Preston:
Right?
W. Curtis Preston:
Because we're not, we're gonna, we're not gonna do two MFAs.
W. Curtis Preston:
So how, how do you make that happening?
Eric Olden:
Yeah, so when you think about the, the architecture
Eric Olden:
that you need in multi-cloud, it's very different than on-prem.
Eric Olden:
Very different than SaaS because.
Eric Olden:
Uh, you need to be able to deploy this identity anywhere, on any cloud, on
Eric Olden:
premises and in, you know, public clouds.
Eric Olden:
And the way that we do it at Strata is through this distributed architecture.
Eric Olden:
We think about it as an air gap, and we have a component of software called,
Eric Olden:
uh, coincidentally an orchestrator.
Eric Olden:
And this orchestrator is, acts like a server of sorts.
Eric Olden:
Can think of it as a proxy, um, but it does more than just proxying and we built
Eric Olden:
it from the ground up to work in this way.
Eric Olden:
So think about this orchestrator as a enforcement point, and it is
Eric Olden:
programmed with policy so it knows, for instance, in your example, Curtis,
Eric Olden:
What kind of authentication am I going to use for this application?
Eric Olden:
Is it gonna be Okta with a password or is it gonna be Okta's multifactor
Eric Olden:
authentication or somebody else's multifactor authentication?
Eric Olden:
So at Runtime, when that user, through their browser puts in the U R L to get
Eric Olden:
to that application, that traffic is intercepted through the orchestrator.
Eric Olden:
So it's transparent.
Eric Olden:
People don't know about Stratus software.
Eric Olden:
It's all under the covers.
Eric Olden:
Behind the scenes.
Eric Olden:
And so then that orchestrator sees this session coming in and says,
Eric Olden:
ah, based on where you want to go, I need to enforce this policy.
Eric Olden:
I'm going to direct in real time, I'm gonna direct you over to this
Eric Olden:
multifactor authentication system.
Eric Olden:
You're gonna then be prompted to do the face scan or something else,
Eric Olden:
and then if that's successful, then the orchestrator says, okay, what's
Eric Olden:
the next step I'm supposed to do?
Eric Olden:
Um, you can program it to do a lot of different things, right?
Eric Olden:
But to keep it simple, uh, maybe that's all you wanted to
Eric Olden:
do is just the authentication.
Eric Olden:
And then at that point, the orchestrator would say, you have a valid multifactor
Eric Olden:
authentication session, so I'm going to now allow you into the application.
Eric Olden:
And, um, that's kind of how it works.
Eric Olden:
And you can distribute these orchestrators wherever you need to.
W. Curtis Preston:
so if I understand that correctly, what you're
W. Curtis Preston:
orchestrating is you're orchestrating me actually talking to Okta, right?
W. Curtis Preston:
So I'm still.
W. Curtis Preston:
I'm still, you know, like, um, so in the, I don't know how to put it.
W. Curtis Preston:
Like you said, you're invisible, right?
W. Curtis Preston:
And I'm still interacting and in this example, I'm still interacting with Okta.
W. Curtis Preston:
I'm doing M F A with Okta, password, with Okta, whatever it is, you know, or both.
W. Curtis Preston:
Uh, but you are sort of pointing that and making that happen.
W. Curtis Preston:
I'm not, 'cause I, I think a minute ago I had the idea where
W. Curtis Preston:
I was interacting with, with you.
W. Curtis Preston:
I.
W. Curtis Preston:
Your being My username and password or whatever it is
W. Curtis Preston:
that I'm using and my M F A.
W. Curtis Preston:
And then you were then passing that on to Okta.
W. Curtis Preston:
That doesn't sound like that was a correct understanding.
Eric Olden:
Y Yeah, I, I think the way to to think about it would be,
Eric Olden:
um, Like in, uh, in the music, the orchestrator, the, the conductor of an
Eric Olden:
orchestrator orchestra is gonna tell the percussion, do this, the horns do that.
Eric Olden:
And, uh, I don't know music that well.
Eric Olden:
So let's stick with those two.
Eric Olden:
Go here, go there, go here, go there.
Eric Olden:
And you know that conductor is not the one playing the music, that is the conductor
Eric Olden:
saying how the music needs to be played.
Eric Olden:
The instruments are the ones that generate the sound, and that conductor is simply
Eric Olden:
saying, go here, then here, then here.
Eric Olden:
That's the way to think about it.
Eric Olden:
It's, uh, really directing that user session in, uh, runtime.
Eric Olden:
So it is, um, it requires these IDPs, the identity providers.
Eric Olden:
It doesn't provide the identity itself.
Eric Olden:
It's the conductor, not the instrument.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And since you now have visibility about identity
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
across the entire environment, do.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Can you use this to figure out, um, who has access to what
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
resources, if there is a breach?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
How did people get in?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Like, I'm sure that you can now do all sorts of interesting
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
forensic cases based on being that single abstraction layer, right?
Eric Olden:
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Eric Olden:
And, uh, you bring up a, a really important, uh, area of orchestration.
Eric Olden:
So what we've been talking about today up until now, has been
Eric Olden:
about the runtime orchestration.
Eric Olden:
So what happens when the users.
Eric Olden:
Clicking on a link.
Eric Olden:
And there's another part of orchestration that has to do with
Eric Olden:
the policies or the rules that people set up to govern what needs to happen
Eric Olden:
in order to access an application.
Eric Olden:
And similar to the I D P fragmentation, the policies that are in these identity
Eric Olden:
providers, they're all built in different, uh, languages and syntax as well.
Eric Olden:
And so, um, if you want to have your policy consistent,
Eric Olden:
Across three different clouds.
Eric Olden:
You would need to know how to program that one policy in three different
Eric Olden:
APIs, three different cloud platforms, and three different data models.
Eric Olden:
It gets very confusing because you're gonna be dealing with
Eric Olden:
very quickly hundreds, if not thousands of these policies.
Eric Olden:
'cause they, you know, just the nature of it.
Eric Olden:
You have more of the more applications, more data you have, the more of these
Eric Olden:
policies you need to think about.
Eric Olden:
So, What do you do?
Eric Olden:
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a universal language that would
Eric Olden:
define policy that would work and be translatable to your Babelfish example?
Eric Olden:
What if we had Babelfish for policy and, uh, we helped at Strata,
Eric Olden:
we helped create a new standard.
Eric Olden:
Uh, called I D Q L stands for Identity Query Language and we built a reference
Eric Olden:
implementation in open source at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation,
Eric Olden:
the C N C F, which is the organization where Kubernetes and some of these
Eric Olden:
other cloud native technologies lives.
Eric Olden:
And what I D Q L will do is policy orchestration.
Eric Olden:
So imagine you've got two clouds, Azure and a w s.
Eric Olden:
And let's say for instance, you want to get your policies from
Eric Olden:
Azure to be the same in a W Ss.
Eric Olden:
Well, you can take this tool called hexa, it's free, point it at the A w Ss and
Eric Olden:
it'll discover policies that are in there.
Eric Olden:
'cause it's programmed to know the APIs.
Eric Olden:
It'll pull out your policies and say, okay, I've got 3000 of 'em and this
Eric Olden:
is what they are structured to do.
Eric Olden:
Translates 'em from the imperative.
Eric Olden:
A proprietary structure that they live in a W Ss and turns
Eric Olden:
it into a generic, uh, middle declarative language called I D Q L.
Eric Olden:
And it's a declarative representation, human readable, which is really handy
Eric Olden:
for a lot of auditing use cases.
Eric Olden:
You say, okay, great, well what am I gonna do with this generic thing?
Eric Olden:
Because I wanna.
Eric Olden:
Push it into, um, Azure.
Eric Olden:
And so HEXA can then say, okay, you want to translate it from generic to specific?
Eric Olden:
No problem.
Eric Olden:
I got that.
Eric Olden:
And you just run that orchestration in the other direction.
Eric Olden:
And what you end up with at, at the end is, uh, two things.
Eric Olden:
One is consistent policy in two places and a human readable,
Eric Olden:
easy to audit, way to categorize and inventory all your policies.
Eric Olden:
In this open free I D Q L standard.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That's
W. Curtis Preston:
like that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:
Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:
Uh, so let me give you another scenario and you tell me if you, uh, I mean,
W. Curtis Preston:
this is what happens, Eric, when you create a new product category.
W. Curtis Preston:
So what about, uh, the scenario of, it's sort of two things, which there
W. Curtis Preston:
could be one solution or you could just go, no, that's not what we do.
W. Curtis Preston:
So I currently use Okta and I want to use, what's the, the main Okta competitor.
W. Curtis Preston:
What's the what?
Eric Olden:
Microsoft Azure Active Directory is pretty
W. Curtis Preston:
I was thinking of like some other third party
W. Curtis Preston:
company, but it doesn't matter.
W. Curtis Preston:
I wanna switch from Okta to Azure, um, or I wanna switch from Azure to Okta or
W. Curtis Preston:
the scenario that you laid out earlier.
W. Curtis Preston:
Uh, we just acquired a company and one of us is Azure and one of us is Okta
W. Curtis Preston:
and we want to go to one of those.
W. Curtis Preston:
Right.
W. Curtis Preston:
Uh, how, how do you, or do you help with that transition?
Eric Olden:
Yeah, a very common use case is, uh, modernization.
Eric Olden:
So yes, you can go from two modern ones like Okta and Azure
Eric Olden:
AD are both cutting edge, modern.
Eric Olden:
Um, but often when you look at the enterprise, they've got stuff that's
Eric Olden:
been running for like 5, 10, 25 years and they're saying, well, geez, this
Eric Olden:
thing was built years and decades before.
Eric Olden:
Things like.
Eric Olden:
Authentication or passwordless and all that came out.
Eric Olden:
So how do we modernize it?
Eric Olden:
How do we get the applications that are used to working on prem
Eric Olden:
and going to a legacy system?
Eric Olden:
How do we make that work with the new cloud stuff?
Eric Olden:
And so that modernization recipe, Or that use case, uh, the way that you
Eric Olden:
do that is you, uh, really quickly you would connect your two legacy
Eric Olden:
or your legacy i d P into the fabric and your cloud one into the fabric.
Eric Olden:
And those don't require code.
Eric Olden:
It's just kind of plug and play.
Eric Olden:
So now you've got two IDPs.
Eric Olden:
Then you tell the orchestrator this is the application today,
Eric Olden:
it's going to, um, the old system.
Eric Olden:
And we want to switch that to talk to the new system.
Eric Olden:
Then you configure that orchestrator and say, look, when a user logs in,
Eric Olden:
direct them to the cloud system.
Eric Olden:
And if that cloud system is using a different protocol, then the
Eric Olden:
old system, the orchestrator, for instance, let's say that the new
Eric Olden:
system uses SAML or federated.
Eric Olden:
Single sign on the security assertion markup language and the
Eric Olden:
old one is using old school cookies.
Eric Olden:
Well, the orchestrator would say, okay, I need to talk to Azure AD
Eric Olden:
using saml and I'm gonna do that flow the, the kind of exchange of
Eric Olden:
the identity information with Azure.
Eric Olden:
And then when I come back and that user is authenticated, I will, uh,
Eric Olden:
create a session to that application that looks just like that old
Eric Olden:
school, one that uses cookies.
Eric Olden:
And you can basically, I don't wanna say trick 'cause you know, it's not like
Eric Olden:
nefarious or anything like that, but the facade aspect of the abstraction layer.
Eric Olden:
It always presents what the application's already expecting in this example,
Eric Olden:
a cookie or something like that.
Eric Olden:
And so when the user comes through, they don't see any of that.
Eric Olden:
They just go to the website and it's like, Hey, I am, uh, going into the
Eric Olden:
same maybe sign-on portal, but under the covers I actually got authenticated
Eric Olden:
against the new thing, not the old thing.
Eric Olden:
And everything works and it's seamless.
W. Curtis Preston:
And are you, are you moving or copying like
W. Curtis Preston:
identities from one to the other?
Eric Olden:
Um, generally, no.
W. Curtis Preston:
customer?
Eric Olden:
Yeah, it, it's generally up to the customer.
Eric Olden:
You can, but generally we find people have these systems already set up.
Eric Olden:
That said, there's a use case that a lot of people like about, uh,
Eric Olden:
just in time or j i t provision.
Eric Olden:
So let's say going into that modernization thing, we've got a million accounts
Eric Olden:
on-prem and Oracle system, and we want to move all of those accounts
Eric Olden:
into the cloud system and what the orchestrator can do when the user
Eric Olden:
comes in, It can verify that user.
Eric Olden:
Maybe it's most likely an old system is gonna be a password.
Eric Olden:
It'll verify that user's password and user ID against Oracle.
Eric Olden:
If that's successful, then that orchestrator will say, ah, I've been
Eric Olden:
programmed to go create a new account for you, and I'm gonna talk to the Azure ad.
Eric Olden:
For instance, I'm gonna create a new account for Eric.
Eric Olden:
I know the user id 'cause I just.
Eric Olden:
Verified it, and I'm gonna say this user ID is, um, now need, we created
Eric Olden:
an account in the cloud and you can even, you know, securely get that
Eric Olden:
password into that, uh, target system.
Eric Olden:
And so then the next time the user comes in, The orchestrator can flag
Eric Olden:
that user and say, wait a minute, you've already been migrated, so I'm
Eric Olden:
not gonna go through that same steps.
Eric Olden:
I'm gonna just push point you over to the cloud system.
Eric Olden:
And now that user, the same username and password are
Eric Olden:
gonna work in the cloud system.
Eric Olden:
And the nice thing about just in time is that you don't have this big bang.
Eric Olden:
And what happens is it's a lot more gradual.
Eric Olden:
And so you don't have those crazy weekends where you're like, oh,
Eric Olden:
we're gonna do a hard switchover.
Eric Olden:
It's just let it run.
Eric Olden:
For typically 90 days, you'll get majority of your users over there.
Eric Olden:
And then for the ones that haven't moved, you can, you can batch 'em and get them
Eric Olden:
over there and have them go through like a pa uh, account verification so
Eric Olden:
you don't have dormant account risk or you minimize it, I should say.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:
yeah, based on your answer, I, I think your answer
W. Curtis Preston:
to my question is actually yes.
W. Curtis Preston:
You just don't do them in mass.
W. Curtis Preston:
You do the, you, you bring the, the user over when they
W. Curtis Preston:
authenticate with the system,
Eric Olden:
That's right.
W. Curtis Preston:
is what, what I heard you say.
W. Curtis Preston:
Okay.
Eric Olden:
It's optional is is what I was trying to say.
Eric Olden:
You don't have to, but if you want to, this is the way we would recommend it.
W. Curtis Preston:
Gotcha.
W. Curtis Preston:
Well, we're, we're kind of running short on time today, Eric.
W. Curtis Preston:
Is there anything that you didn't get to talk about that you'd like to talk
W. Curtis Preston:
about in our last few minutes together?
W. Curtis Preston:
I.
Eric Olden:
Uh, well, you know, this has been a great conversation.
Eric Olden:
I think, you know, if, if this is interesting to the audience, um,
Eric Olden:
they could find out more about our, uh, platform@strata.io.
Eric Olden:
And, um, we also have a fun thing.
Eric Olden:
We like to, we call it the identity orchestration challenge,
Eric Olden:
the use case challenge.
Eric Olden:
So, um, check out our website at strata.io/podcast and if you throw a
Eric Olden:
use case to us, just find the hardest one that you think we couldn't solve
Eric Olden:
and, um, we'd love to demo it for you.
Eric Olden:
Here's how it works, and I'll give you a pair of the Apple Air Pod
Eric Olden:
Pro, the ones that go in the ear.
Eric Olden:
I don't know the names exactly, but, uh, AirPod Pro I think is what it's called
W. Curtis Preston:
the ones, yeah.
Eric Olden:
the good ones.
Eric Olden:
And, um, yeah, so just check it out.
Eric Olden:
We'll show you how it works and we'd love to, uh, to have a conversation with you
W. Curtis Preston:
So, uh, I, I, does anybody still use n i s?
W. Curtis Preston:
You remember n i s the na?
Eric Olden:
naming information service.
W. Curtis Preston:
Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:
Does anybody still use that?
Eric Olden:
yeah, I bet you know, in the big enterprise's, NetWare,
Eric Olden:
that's still running around, I'm sure.
W. Curtis Preston:
Lord.
W. Curtis Preston:
just, that was, that was what we used back in the, back in the day
W. Curtis Preston:
was n i s even that, that's even before your time Prasanna, I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:
Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:
Well, thanks, thanks Prasanna for, uh, hanging out.
W. Curtis Preston:
Good questions again,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah, I try.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I try.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And Eric, it's nice to meet you and Curtis, I do want to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
hear about the Barbenheimer,
W. Curtis Preston:
Barbenheimer.
W. Curtis Preston:
Absolutely.
W. Curtis Preston:
Well, you know me, you'll hear about it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
will hear about it.
W. Curtis Preston:
And, um, and thanks Eric for coming on
Eric Olden:
Thanks so much.
Eric Olden:
Had a great time.
Eric Olden:
Appreciate it.
W. Curtis Preston:
and, uh, thanks again to our listeners.
W. Curtis Preston:
We'd be nothing without you, and remember to subscribe so
W. Curtis Preston:
that you can restore it all.
W. Curtis Preston:
There was a file, but I deleted it.
W. Curtis Preston:
Too bad.
W. Curtis Preston:
Your backup system isn't worth speed.
W. Curtis Preston:
Needed your backup.
W. Curtis Preston:
You had.
W. Curtis Preston:
To fix and said, it's all Jack.
W. Curtis Preston:
See how right on Facebook about you?
W. Curtis Preston:
Don't underestimate the things that I'll do.
W. Curtis Preston:
There was a file, but I deleted it to.
W. Curtis Preston:
System isn't worth
W. Curtis Preston:
when it keeps thinking that you restore it.
W. Curtis Preston:
It didn't work at all.
W. Curtis Preston:
Think of you up.
W. Curtis Preston:
It would work if it wasn't.
W. Curtis Preston:
And rescue.
W. Curtis Preston:
Yourself into every backup run, hoping not just for once.
W. Curtis Preston:
It'll be completely done.
W. Curtis Preston:
Maybe Sunday it'll.
W. Curtis Preston:
You could,
W. Curtis Preston:
you could restore it
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