For more than 25 years, Martin Gee has brought his passion for and creativity with technology to help businesses operate and grow more holistically and organically. His path has included being a pioneer in the Identity and Access Management (IAM) industry, executing a multi-million dollar technology transaction, creating and selling the highly successful company ICSynergy®, and now the launch of Evolved Identity.
How did you get started in IAM and why were you positioned so well to help shape the industry?
“When I started my career in the mid-90s, it was at a crucial time in the industry because companies were going onto the web and doing things that had really never been done before.
“I was able to help companies get onto the Internet and do things for employees and customers using web technologies for the very first time, I really cut my teeth on that. I didn’t have a bunch of baggage with some legacy technology. So I think my experience and the timing of all that positioned me pretty well to be a bit of a pioneer in the Internet and security space.”
What was the problem you were setting out to solve for customers?
“One of the things I’ve always been good at is seeing the big picture and looking at technology as something that people have to pay money for. So the total cost of ownership for technology is something I’ve always paid attention to because it’s how businesses can be successful or not. You can’t just give them technology and have them spend infinite amounts of money on manpower, that’s not a success.
“So it has always been about creating very reusable technology patterns and methodologies, going to customers and helping them benefit from web technologies using a thought process that this isn’t just some whiz-bang stuff, it needs to work well, be secure, and be cost effective.”
Where did the idea for IdentityRM come from?
“IdentityRM is my take on how to make these information technology tools useful to the business. In the security world we live in, a lot of the tools weren’t built to accelerate your business and allow it to grow more organically. They were built with more of a funnel approach where the IT department was doing everything. So IdentityRM is our approach to IAM that enables businesses to distribute responsibilities to the non-IT workforce such as business partners and franchisees, while also running more organically and holistically, in a very secure way.
“If you look at every major business in the world, like a Pepsi or a GE, they’re all built on distributed business models. So it’s about time the tooling in our industry addresses that business model. They have not been built that way for the last 20 years. We bring a fresh take on how to do this in a way that matches the needs of the modern business workforce.”
What distinguishes Evolved Identity and IdentityRM from other IAM products and providers?
“I believe in building on standards and the work of others. With IdentityRM, we took the approach of extending market-leading Identity Providers (IdPs) Okta, Azure AD, and Ping, among others. These products are very well established in the marketplace. In my mind, it’s better for customers if we add value to something they already know versus creating yet another third-party system that adds technical overhead and risk to today’s overburdened IT staff.
“If I can offer value-add intellectual property and frameworks around these IdPs, that would position us in the marketplace more effectively. I want our partners to say ‘hey, these guys can help us sell more of our products.’ So that’s the mentality and drive that I founded IdentityRM around. Not just achieving a bottom line services number, but evolving technology, making IdentityRM easy to own for customers and a tool for growing their business.”
What’s your vision for Evolved Identity and how do you see it impacting the industry?
“I’ve been doing this for over 25 years. This is part of my DNA. I have a passion for this. I’ve always been very astute at identifying technology gaps in the industry and addressing them.
“Launching Evolved Identity positions me to have a singular focus and amplify what I was doing previously. It’s going to allow me to provide an even bigger network effect. I’m very excited and very bullish about what we’re doing because I know we’re solving a problem that the industry has. Now that we have a singular focus as a software company this will accelerate the partnerships we have with Okta, Microsoft, and others.”
Ready to learn more about how Evolved Identity can achieve your IAM goals? Check out our LinkedIn page and contact us today!
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