What do you see as the opportunity for partners in the identity space?

Certainly, for the enterprises that treat identity as the foundation of security, there's a lot of architecture and solution engineering to occur by partners within the Global 5000 … There certainly is [a place for smaller resellers too]. The universe is pretty darn large here. I don't see that the large global [system integrators] are going to get to full market coverage there. Many companies are frankly starved for talent … Everywhere you look, people have challenges finding qualified individuals … There's a shortage of talent that can implement and maintain identity.

Where do you see the market going over the next couple of years?

I certainly see a tremendous amount of automation and intelligence streamlining what, today, are a lot of manual processes. I think mobility is going to enable a more real-time notion of access control, versus a static version of access control. [What I mean by that is] enabling people to access systems for shorter periods of time, where authorization is granted in real time … If an administrator wants to manage an email account, they won't have admin rights, they will be granted admin rights for a shorter period of time to do a task. I think identity becomes more real time. I think access control becomes more automated and more intelligent. I think that there will become identity services offerings that will allow enterprises to outsource identity in ways they can't do today … to partners and/or service providers. I would just call it a general maturation and professionalization of the whole platform of managing identity … It was definitely a very cottage and sleepy [industry], and now that's changing.