Venture Watch: Three Companies That Will Change Your Business

Started up by a former head of HR at Sybase, Bridgestream attempts to solve the provisioning and access problems faced by large enterprises. When something changes in a corporation—reorganization, layoff or project change—all sorts of changes need to happen to corporate systems. VPN and building access needs to be shut off. Folder access needs to be changed. Phone numbers rerouted. Passwords and access rights changed.

In many organizations, all those changes take place close to the user. The facility person changes access codes. The network guys change VPN or corporate network rights. Network and application passwords are typically changed by the owners of those systems.

Synchronizing all those changes, especially in the case of a layoff, can be a nightmare. IT typically doesnt know about corporate restructurings until the night before. Inevitably, something gets overlooked. There are numerous stories of contractors retaining access to systems long after the job has ended, or embittered former employees stealing data after being laid off. With Bridgestreams real-time authorization management system, all that can be automated.

And, in addition to automating changes to ERP, network sign-on, collaboration tools and other systems, the system saves a record of those changes. That means lawyers and others can go back in time to see who had access to what, when. "Thats a critical part of Sarbanes-Oxley 404 compliance," said Kertzmann, who sits on Bridgestreams board. "It helps them document and manage all those things that are required by law."

Setups no picnic. Bridgestream integrates with Oblix, Netegrity and Microsofts Directory Services, but it takes a lot of elbow grease to put it all together. And only large companies with a pre-existing identity management program will find real value in Bridgestream.

But for at least one large financial services customer, its proving invaluable. The pilot implementation, which has now gone into production, manages 150,000 employees worldwide. Its available now, and for more information, head to Bridgestreams Web site at www.bridgestream.com.

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