Looking for a Pre-Sales Solutions Architect - Identity Management

We’re looking for a pre-sales solutions architect for identity management. Here’s some background on the opening and if you’re interested in applying click here.

Job Summary:
As a member of the Presales team, you will play a key role as a technical liaison for Senior Sales Representatives and clients. 70% travel to clients. The position can be based in anywhere in the Western US.  However, it requires 70% travel to client locations.

Essential Responsibilities:
• Architect, design and implement Identity Management solutions for Quest customers 
• You will be presenting and demonstrating Quest’s Identity Management Solutions at customer sites, performing white board presentations, architecture overviews, product walkthroughs and proof of concepts
• To successfully execute procurement activities: RFP responses, trial execution, installation and tuning
• Represent Quest Software’s Identity Management Group at relevant trade shows and user groups  

Minimum Qualifications:
• At least 3 years of building and implementing Identity Management Solutions within heterogeneous environments
• Strong Active Directory and Enterprise Directory Services knowledge 
• Experience with a competing product (SUN, Oracle, CA or IBM)   
• EDUCATION B.A./B.S. in CS/CIS/MIS/Business or related field equivalent
• Available to travel 2 - 4 days/week

Preferred Qualifications:
• Experienced in User Provisioning and management, Help Desk, User Self Service and password management, Multiple Directory Integration or Synchronization, Account workflow and management, Single Sign On and system integration to consolidate user accounts/identities
• Strong communication skills both orally and verbally

Technorati Tags: QSFT,Quest Software,identity management

Nick Nikols joins Quest Software!

On December 20, 2006 I blogged about Nick returning to Novell after a stint at The Burton Group. Well, Nick has now joined Quest Software. I’ve re-posted what I said about Nick back in ‘06 because there’s not much more I can say other than I am very excited that Nick has joined us and I’m personally looking forward to his influence on Quest’s identity and access management strategy.

I’ve known Nick for a long time now. I first met Nick while I was at Zoomit back in the late 90’s. Nick is one of a number of stellar directory smart (directory enabled?!) people in the world. We released Zoomit VIA – the world’s first commercial metadirectory product – in 1998. By the time Microsoft acquired us in June, 1999 Nick had single handedly architected and then convinced folks at Novell to build what was then called DirXML and is now called Novell Identity Manager. I remember when DirXML was released and how amazed I was at Nick’s approach of using XML as the foundation to help solve the metadirectory problem. It was truly bleeding edge back then but now is totally hip because of its XML roots.


Nick, along with a number of other great Novell folks – like Brad Anderson, Greg Macris, Samm diStasio, Ed Anderson – left Novell during the rein of Jack Messman. Nick joined The Burton Group where he served as an analyst in their identity management practice for a number of years. Over that time I worked with Nick both when I was at Microsoft and at Quest. We talked a number of times about the possibility of returning to Novell but it always seemed to be a non-starter with Nick (and everyone else!) that he’d want to go back while Jack was at the helm. Well, Jack left, Nick got a call and the rest is history. Nick is now VP, Product Management at Novell and I wish him the best of luck.

I’ve always been a big believer in Novell’s strategy, vision and products. If there is a company that really and truly “gets” directory it is Novell. Novell’s identity management products currently generate about $100M in revenue annually. The other players in this business do not break out their IDM revenue but I am willing to bet everyone trails this number by a lot. A couple of reasons for their success are the fact that they do have a good product, an integrated product stack and they have been successful penetrating the SMB (small & medium business) market.

Welcome aboard Nick!!!

Technorati Tags: Nick Nikols,QSFT,Quest Software,#Quest

Three Steps to Simplified & Intelligent Data Governance

We are hosting a webcast on this topic on Thursday, May 26 at 11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT:

You need to track access to critical data across your enterprise for security and compliance. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to natively gather information on data ownership and usage.

Join us for a free one-hour webcast as we discuss three steps you can take to achieve better data governance:

1. Discover your data—to find out who is accessing what data
2. Identify data owners—to remove IT from the role of “gatekeeper”
3. Establish consistency—to properly apply permissions and manage servers in groups

You’ll also see how Quest’s newly released Access Manager 2.0 simplifies these steps to identify and assign the appropriate data custodians, as well as centrally manage access to data, files and shares so that users access only the resources they need—no more and no less.

Register for webcast today!

Technorati Tags: QSFT,Quest Software,Access management,access manager

Attachmate lays off Mono employees

Read this blog post earlier today and thought I’d pass it on:

Attachmate is moving swiftly to re-organize the Novell business it acquired for $2.2 billion. Today Attachmate laid off an unknown number of U.S. based Novell developers that were working on the open source Mono project.


Mono is the Novell led effort to provide an open source implementation of the Microsoft .NET framework on Linux.

"We have re-established Nuremburg as the headquarters of our SUSE business unit and the prioritization and resourcing of certain development efforts - including Mono - will now be determined by the business unit leaders there," said Jeff Hawn, Chairman and CEO of The Attachmate Group in a statement sent to InternetNews.com. "This change led to the release of some US based employees today. As previously stated, all technology roadmaps remain intact with resources being added to those in a manner commensurate with customer demand."

I've been following Mono since Miguel de Icaza started the project back in 2004. Yes, I know, there are lots of people that don't like Mono and its Microsoft styled technology. I also know a lot of people (including me) that rely on it as a way to run .NET on Linux.

I don't know what is happening to Miguel (yet). I know that without his leadership this project would not be where it is today. The U.S. based developers in the Novell project are the ones that I have interfaced with over the last 7 years. They are a skilled group and it's a real shame that Attachmate is letting them go.

That said, talent like that will likely be picked up by a rival - or maybe even Microsoft. The patent related issues have long made Mono a technology that some vendors (like Red Hat) have avoided.

It is my personal hope that the developers are taken care of financially by Attachmate and that they find new employment soon.

As for the Mono project, I hope that Attachmate has a plan to keep this project growing. Despite its shortcomings, it is an essential part of the Linux ecosystem, providing a critical bridge between .NET and Linux.

Technorati Tags: Novell,Mono,NetIQ,Attachmate