Transcript
I'm Neil Coy, Vice President of Global Delivery Services here at SailPoint. In this series, we discuss identity security cloud product extensions, tools and processes that leverage the Atlas platform. We deep dive into our client security goals with an aim to defend against today's identity centric threats. Today, I am joined by Sagnik Mukherjee, Senior Manager in the Identity Practice at Optiv. Hello, Sagnik. How are you doing, man? Hey, Neil. Good. How are you? I'm doing great. Thanks. No complaints. So we're going to talk a little bit about a client that you guys migrated recently, which I'm always excited about. So I'm going to dive into some questions, if that works. Absolutely. All right. So Optiv has been engaged with one of our large insurance clients this year, focused on a migration to our SaaS identity security solution. Sagnik, can you get started by talking a little bit about the work we've been partnering on there? Who did you migrate or what type of product did you migrate from and what does it look like? Absolutely. And yes, as you said, I mean, this is a topic very close to us and we are strategically working together towards this particular goal around migrating clients to more SaaS based solutions. So this particular client we are going to discuss a little bit about is Encova Insurance. It's an existing legacy client for us, which was or at some point was on IAQ, the on-prem product. We helped them move from the on-prem product to ISA or Identity Security Cloud, the SaaS product. Interesting thing about this client was that a lot of push towards SaaS was driven by the organization from the top. They've been adopting a cloud-first strategy for some time now and moving identity governance as a platform to SaaS was one of their big pushes and we helped them do that. Where we are right now is in a very exciting space where we have finished the migration of their environment and now we are helping them build more mature capabilities using the full potential of what ISA has to offer. So it's exciting times ahead and we learned a lot as part of this migration with Encova Insurance. Saragnac, you built solutions to address some fairly unique customer problems around this migration. Can you talk about how you approached the migration effort with Encova and of course, what were the challenges that it addressed? What were the outcomes? And then talk to any tooling that we were able to leverage to speed up the overall migration. Absolutely, Neil. So a good byproduct of us helping Encova through this migration was us learning a lot about how to go about this. We refined our approach. In fact, we came up with our own framework around migration when we are helping clients migrate from these on-prem to ISC as a product. We are looking at migration through three dimensions, if you will. First is the technology part, of course, using the right technology, using the right toolset to help clients migrate effectively, efficiently and quickly to ISC as their next product. The second dimension is the data and processes. Now, we in this industry, Neil, we know how important having good data hygiene in an organization is for an IGA transformation like this to be successful. So we are focusing quite a bit on the data and the process aspect of it. We're making sure that it's just not about the tool bringing, coming in and helping them do their business, but also cleaning the data, cleaning the processes, refining, streamlining them before we move them to the new environment. And the third part of the third dimension that we have developed as part of this framework is the operating model idea around it, which basically encompasses these two drivers that we talked about, the two dimensions we talked about. As part of our experience with ENCOVA, when we built this operating model, the whole idea behind that was we were working very closely with the SailPoint professional services team and the client stakeholders. We understood that there was a need to build a very specific roles and responsibility matrix and an operating model so that it's not only us who know what is done by who, but the client understand who does what. So we put that operating model in place so that we all knew what role we're going to play as part of this migration story. And overall, the challenges that we faced in the beginning where the technology and the processes and the data, they were not really fitting in the right place. As we got the operating model streamlined and in place, everything else started getting streamlined as well. So it was a learning experience. We did do a lot in terms of setting the operating model, right? And from there, it was more or less, we just hosted in terms of getting the migration done. I love it. Well, let's deep dive into, I think, what all of our wonderful viewers want to see. And let's talk about tooling and what was built on top of Atlas. So what technologies and frameworks were you able to take advantage of with the Atlas platform as the foundation for Encova's migration to Identity Security Cloud? And how did this help address identity related challenges? Sure. Yeah. Atlas is one of our favorite topics now. So before I jump into the tools, one thing that I want to highlight that we really leveraged a lot as a product from or a byproduct from SailPoint assessment was the BVA or the business value assessment or analysis. The BVA helped us understand the current state of the organization or of the ecosystem that the organization was operating on, that on top of us being at the client for some time, gave us the right foundation to get started on this migration. So I just wanted to make sure that whoever is listening, whoever is thinking about having these migrations in place, do understand that there's a huge potential, a huge opportunity in the BVA's that SailPoint and the partners are putting together that gives us the right roadmap around the migration. In terms of tooling, in terms of what we leveraged from Atlas specifically, the extensibility tool set from Atlas, right? So all the sp-config migration or the migration tool that Atlas has to offer as a front end is what we leveraged. That helped us quicken or speed up or accelerate the connected migration from the existing platform or existing ecosystem to ISC. So we leveraged the migration tool set extremely heavily. And going forward is where we are seeing the value of Atlas coming in more and more. So now that the client is in ISC, we have an opportunity to use the access modeling, access insights, role modeling, all the AI and ML capabilities that the platform has to offer and help them mature their IGA capabilities around things like access certification or role-based access control. So overall, it was a huge opportunity for us to leverage as much as Atlas has to offer. And we continue and hope to continue doing that going forward as well. So I did hear one fun stat. I think I got a couple, but I'll throw one out here now. I heard that we went from hundreds of rules down to 20 when you completed the full migration. Yes, absolutely. And that's something that we are looking at as an opportunity because it is not a lift and shift exercise. It is also an opportunity to look for what can be defined. Now, we all know roles, explosion and proliferation is an issue. This gave us an opportunity to go back, go back to the design board, look at can we streamline some of these? Can we consolidate some of this? And yes, there was a huge opportunity we saw in consolidating the roles. And we actually are continuing to still do that across the other business functions within the organization. That's amazing. I mean, talk about a seriously improved maintenance schedule, 20 rules versus hundreds. That's fantastic. All right. So how easily can migration tooling be integrated into a client's existing systems? Well, the answer to that question, Neil, is evolving. So I'll just share my experience doing this, the one with Belenkova. It was early on. I think we were one of the early partners who actually did a migration. So we were together learning quite a bit. We did use, as I said, the migration tool set from Atlas and from SailPoint as a platform, what you had to offer. But we also did face some challenge in terms of a steep learning curve around using the SPF config migration tool set. That was a huge opportunity for us to accelerate the migration. The other thing that I would also say is back when we were doing this, a lot of this tool set was not that freely or generally available, which I know is not the case anymore. Things are improving and evolving as we speak. So the bigger challenges that we face back then around general availability of those tools or integrating those tools into this environment of what we were doing around migration were very much because of the primitive nature of what we were doing back then, which I understand do not exist anymore. From a technical standpoint, the challenges that we faced, one was, I think you've talked about this, the roles. So when we looked at the existing RBAC models in the organization, we could see that it was not something that was ready to be moved into the new ecosystem with ISC. So we actually stopped the process of migrating. We looked at it from design perspective. We looked at redesigning, streamlining them and then migrating them off to the new environment. And the second one, which is very typical, but something that we all keep an eye open about is we did see some legacy platforms or legacy products within their existing ecosystem, which were not really ready to be moved to a SaaS based platform like ISC. So we had to work around a few things here and there, but we worked together on that. Client was extremely motivated to make this migration happen as well. So at this point, I can happily say we are over all of those challenges and cruising, as I said earlier. That's nice. I was told that we were able, between our two teams, to get all of the applications moved over in about 45 to 55 days, somewhere in there. Overall, you can say so. I mean, in the beginning, there were, of course, there were some operating model conversations we were having, but once we got it, the momentum was great. That's incredible. That's, you know, think about the years of work that go into application onboarding to be able to pick it up and shift it all within, you know, 30 to 60 days is always fantastic. All right. So popping down, talk to us about what a successful migration looked like for this customer. Was there anything specific they were focused on achieving as part of the migration? For me, success or for our teams, the success is when the clients can get to their goals, right? And we can help them move towards their goals. For migration specifically, what we have realized, what the success factors are, one is how quickly and how effectively, how efficiently you can move the assets to this new environment or to ISC. The time to value for product is extremely important because you also have to understand that we are not introducing something net new to the environment. We are replacing it with something which was more legacy, which was more primitive, right? So time to value is extremely important. And how quickly we do this is huge from a success factor perspective. The other thing that we are looking at from whether it is successful or not is what does the end state look like and what is the day one looking like for clients? So, for example, in this case, once we move to Identity Security Cloud, am I able to bring in the next level capabilities? Like I said, access modeling, role insights and the other features that are only available in a much more mature platform like ISC. Can I bring those capabilities to the client right away so that they can start improving their IGA maturity posture? If I'm able to do that, then I would call it to be a successful transformation. And in the end, from stakeholder engagement perspective, we are also looking at whether the entire organization from top to bottom is aligned with this migration, right? So in my experience, the way CIOs and CISOs look at SAS migration is sometimes different from how a tactical team on the ground would look at it, right? Because they're looking at it from different lenses. If we can align those lenses and have them look at it from the same perspective, that's another success factor for us. And I think we are able to do this for this time because the leadership looks at it as a cloud-first strategy execution and the tactical team looks at it as getting a mature product and they're able to do more things in a faster pace. So all in all, it's a win-win for everyone. That's awesome. Yeah, I was told across the board, the entire migration took only or took less than about nine months, somewhere in the eight and a half range, which is pretty amazing. You know, if you look at the tooling that you guys built, we built, looks like we were able to cut down the overall timing, probably around 35% to 45%, which is pretty remarkable to say the least. So certainly a fantastic win across the board. Obviously, always love the partnership here. So what can others learn from this migration? There's a lot to learn, as I said. I think every transformation effort or every transformational effort has a lot of learning for us as partners, for the product teams and for the clients. A few things from a migration perspective that we have learned and as we talk to our clients who are considering migration, we try to talk about, one is that it's a huge opportunity, as I said earlier, to re-evaluate what you are doing currently. Just because things are working right now, just because the data looks okay right now, doesn't mean that it is 100% of what you need. So the migration gives you an opportunity not only to lift and shift what you have, but lift it, refine it, streamline it, redesign it if needed, and then shift it into a new platform like Identity Security Cloud. Again, the more efficiently and more effectively you do this, the higher is the probability of you being successful with this new product. The other learning, and I think I touched upon this earlier as well, is you need to be aligned across the board around what value a migration like this to SaaS product really brings. Now, we talk about a reduction in TCO. We talk about faster deployments because of better capability being moved to the product in a more streamlined way. Those are absolutely the right value proposition or value statements for SaaS migration. But for the teams who are managing identity governance on a day-to-day basis, they should also see the value in the fact that you now have better tool set, better capability, better features at your disposal that will make your life better in the short run, not only from cost perspective in the long run. So there is a lot of value proposition alignment that needs to happen, and that needs to happen across the organization, which is huge from learning perspective that we learn. And the third thing, and the final thing from learning perspective, and Neil, you and I have worked together on this as part of a learning from our first migration, is if an organization is thinking about or considering migration, bring in all the stakeholders who will be involved in this much sooner in the game. Be it the partner, selfishly, I would like to be involved much sooner. Be the product or be the stakeholders who will be one way or the other impacted by this migration. So bring them all together in the room much sooner so that once you start executing, it is as smooth as possible going forward until the product is launched. So those are some of the learnings that we have gained from our experience, and we try to scale them as we move from one organization to the other. So you mentioned new tooling available, better product set overall. So I'm sure all of our viewers want to know, what are they getting into next? What is the first big project that they want to take on now that they've migrated across and they've got all these new tools and toys to play with? Role-based access modeling or RBAC or cleaning, streamlining the roles and using access insights and role modeling or role mining as AI offering within the product is definitely the way to go or definitely the next step that something like ISC offers you right away. What we are doing with some of our clients, at least this one that we're talking about specifically is, as I said, we saw an opportunity for us to clean up the access, the role models, and we are not only doing it based on how we used to do it traditionally, but we also constantly think about how can I validate what I'm doing with the AI and ML capabilities that SharePoint has to offer from access insights and role mining features. So the next steps are basically start leveraging what all this platform has to offer and start making your life easier. There's a lot of automation available for things that you used to use spreadsheet for and role modeling is one of those things. So the opportunities are endless because this not only makes your life easier to do a lot of things that you have been doing in the past because it is also less customization. You're not managing scripts or you're not maintaining a lot of things that you were in the past because it's a SaaS solution. So opportunities are endless. We just have to focus on what you want to do and then kind of take it from there. That's fantastic. And I got to tell you, I love that they're moving fast with AI. It is amazing what kind of whether you're doing role modeling or access insights, just how fast you can advance your program. You and I have been in the business for years and years. Access modeling, RBAC, whatever you want to call it today. If you go back 10 years ago, that was a $5, $10 million project. You were there for years and it was one department, one person at a time sitting down, building out role models and spreadsheets. And then you had the never ending, okay, now that we're done, we're going to start back on day one and we're going to go through those people and streamline. You know, it's just a cyclical process that just never ended. Obviously, it was great for consulting, less so for clients. So to be able to go in and just push the button, get a number of answers, you still have to do some legwork with the end stakeholders and folks like that. But man, is it faster and just the rinse and repeat process is incredible to watch. Absolutely. I mean, don't get me wrong, we still have to do a lot of what you described. I think it has an adoption curve. We will get there where it is all sustained through these capabilities, but it has definitely provided another layer of validation of what we have done in the past so that we can validate and then say, yeah, we're doing the right thing for the organization. And the most important thing I think you've touched upon this is, it helps you sustain and manage this going forward. You don't have to keep doing it over and over again, because now there is somebody who's taking care of this in an automated manner. So that's a huge value. Now I'm with you. The other thing I like about kind of the role modeling aspect is it's really easy for auditors to go back and understand why that role. You know, if you go back to kind of the old legacy spreadsheet approach, it was because that's what they said versus, no, this is the common access. This is what we're seeing people use. This is why we're going to put it together this way. And you can go down to the actual algorithm that's like, hey, this is the output that they were looking for. And at the end of the day, we now have a solution that meets audit needs, meet business needs. And if you go back to kind of where we started, that business value assessment, that is so important. I mean, it takes a couple of days to put together, but you streamline all your costs. You know exactly what that changeover is going to save you. And now all of a sudden, you know, you finish your migration. And the first thing you do is introduce a new RBAC process. That's not low hanging fruit. That's a massive, massive thing to say, we're going to go after this one first. Really neat. Especially for an organization who've been suffering from rogue proliferation, right? It's a breath of fresh air. A hundred percent. So, all right. So tell me what's on the horizon for Optive Migrations. You obviously got this one under the belt. And, you know, you guys have been partners with us forever and ever. So there are, you know, when we think about large migration possibilities and things like that, you probably have more clients than most. What does that look like? Where are you guys heading? Where are you taking this? Yeah, that's one of the things that excites me and the team the most, right? As you said, we've been partners forever at this point. And having the admiral status, it just continues for us to kind of build more and more on top of what we already have in client portfolio perspective. Having done so much of SailPoint work in the past, it also means that we have a lot of clients in our portfolio who are on a legacy on-prem environment. So we have a lot of those conversations in place that are happening in the background where these clients are really looking into SaaS migration. So we are attacking or we are approaching those conversations in a very methodical manner. We are looking at it, we are classifying organizations for which this migration would make a lot of sense. But at the same time, we don't want to go and propose something like this for organization which is already quite complex, which may or may not be ready for SaaS migration like this yet, right? So we are approaching this in a structured manner. We are approaching this in a manner which somewhat aligns with client's appetite as well. But trust me, there's a lot of this happening in the background. There are a lot of opportunities in the pipeline that are specifically around migration. The other thing that we are doing internally is we are refining and maturing our own methodologies and our own framework around how we're going to approach migration as they keep coming. We are building our own tool set, getting a little bit of inspiration from what SailPoint has done as part of your tool set around Atlas and the migration toolkit and the migration hub. We are building our own tool set as well to speed up things that we would be doing as part of migration. So there's a lot of activity happening internally as well as talking to the clients around how they should be approaching migration. And end of the day, again, it's all about us teaming together and taking the right value to the client and do it at the right time, within the right time and within the right budget, of course, right? So there's a lot happening is how I would summarize this. I love it. Well, more importantly, as always, Sagnik, it's been a fantastic 13-year run together. Love the partnership overall. Certainly appreciate you having some time for us today and catching up. So thanks for sharing your experiences. I hope the identity security community can leverage these collective insights and experiences. And of course, I hope you have a wonderful day. To those watching, stay tuned for more from our Built on SailPoint series. There is fantastic content coming your direction. And as always, Sagnik, thanks. Have a great one. Talk soon, guys.
