This week, SailPoint announced their intent to acquire ERP Maestro, a SaaS-based solution for monitoring SoD controls and manage access controls in business applications such as SAP. This announcement fits well into the SailPoint strategy of expanding their core offerings IdentityIQ and IdentityNow with additional SaaS services, such as AI-based identity analytics and, now, capabilities for in-depth management and control of access in business applications.
Acquisition will help SailPoint in further expanding their offerings for business applications
This acquisition also fits well into the SailPoint focus on managing users and their access across the entire lifecycle, and for all types of services. While SailPoint has been strong in managing SAP users and roles before, and also comes with considerable capabilities in SoD management, this acquisition will help them in further expanding their offerings for business applications.
On the other hand, the acquisition, once executed and once the two product sets are integrated, will give organizations an interesting option for a one-stop-shop for a solution that covers IGA (Identity Governance & Administration, i.e., User Lifecycle Management, Identity Provisioning, and Access Governance) and delivers in depth SoD control and access control capabilities for environments containing business applications of various vendors.
While ERP Maestro’s biggest strength is in managing SAP environments, they also support some other business applications. SailPoint also provides support for a wide range of business applications.
Combining in-depth capabilities for ERP and core business applications serves current trends
With the business application landscape undergoing change, with SaaS offerings already playing a strong role in certain areas, and with a trend towards multi-vendor approaches for providing business applications, the combination of in-depth capabilities for ERP and other core business applications, and the breadth of supported systems SailPoint can offer, serves these trends well.
As for every acquisition, there is a need for unifying roadmaps and integrating the offerings, on which SailPoint must deliver. However, due to the specific strengths and focus of the existing solutions of both SailPoint and ERP Maestro, we see significant advantages in this strategy, and limited risk for existing customers of the companies.
CIOs should revisit their strategies around siloes of business applications
We recommend CIOs to revisit their strategies regarding access control, SoD control, and GRC for their business applications as well as their IT organizations, to reflect the move away from siloed solutions towards a more open ecosystem of business applications by various vendors, frequently deployed as SaaS.
