The adoption rate of Software as a Service (SaaS) applications has been dramatic. Trials of applications like Salesforce.com, WebEx, or NetSuite have transitioned into enterprise-wide deployments, and many organizations have adopted a "SaaS first" policy. The tendency of SaaS applications to be siloed has made identity management, user access and authorization an increasing challenge. The task of onboarding users is a time-intensive, manual process that involves administrators across multiple departments, which can introduce risk. Additionally, in most enterprises, Microsoft Active Directory (AD) is the authoritative user directory that governs access to basic IT services such as email and file sharing.
