Thanks for your message – below is the list of the major capabilities of our solution, which currently provides support for Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Google Apps, OpenAir, QuickArrow and ADP (in addition to Google Apps):
• User provisioning – provides centralized point of provisioning and deprovisioning of users accounts within cloud applications, and ongoing management of user permissions and authorizations.
• Role and profile management – enables organizations to centrally manage cloud application roles, profiles and permissions through normalized permission models, and maps policies to users and roles.
• Approval workflows – provides auditable cross-functional approval processes for users requiring new or amended access permissions, or role and profile changes.
• Directory integration – enables organizations to seamlessly synchronize Conformity’s user repository with on-premise directory services.
• Compliance reporting – provides reports required for effective preparation for audits for SOX, HIPAA, PCI and other regulatory mandates and standards.
• Usage analytics – provides visibility, analytics and reporting on cloud application and license utilization.
• Change management – enables archiving, management and recovery of application configurations and role models.

For information on Conformity or our solution I would encourage you to visit our website at http://www.conformity-inc.com, or feel free to email me as well at sbils@conformity-inc.com.

Thanks!
Scott Bils

I would say I agree with the content, however I believe there are another dimension to the APIs and Standards themes.

For APIs: there may not be a pre-defined set or even a way to quantify the existence of good APIs for SaaS today. What you do have under APIs is that REST is the way to go – dev community embraces this approach and several web 2.0 companies provide this such as SalesForce.com and other. If you go with REST, either light or broad, you will be a player to integrated with most of SaaS and non-SaaS vendors.

For Standards: you should look beyond the old approach to SAML and XACML. They are fine and helpful, no doubt about that. However other light weight, approaches are becoming extremely popular. Look at the companies using http://oauth.net/ , such as Twitter. Extremely simple approach to SSO. Not your typical heavy weight security protocol. Also take a look how other web 2.0 companies are leveraging this, for example ZenDesk.

There is a on-the-glass approach for APIs and Standards that are coming with the likes of web 2.0 companies that you be really interesting for your team to take a look. Speed is your best advantage, adding some ultra-cool innovative ways to link/connect with Apps in SaaS and on premise would be very powerful.

Cheers,

–alex

http://oauth.net/

Getting very popular with sites such as Twitter:

http://apiwiki.twitter.com/OAuth-FAQ

Way simple, and cool.

–alex