Wanted: BlitzWeekend teammates

[Erik Wright]

Hello,

My name is Erik Wright. I'm a developer and entrepreneur based in
Montreal.

I'm planning a project for the upcoming BlitzWeekend (http://
blitzweekend.com/) and I need a few good Ruby-on-Rails developers to
join my team.

What is BlitzWeekend? Briefly, we will spend two days (Saturday and
Sunday, March 1 and 2) creating a product under intense pressure.
During the event we will be supported and advised by a panel of serial
entrepreneurs, marketing gurus, investors, etc. At the end we will
have the opportunity to present our product.

The product I currently envision is an innovative network appliance
that is "very Web 2.0". An important component of this product will be
a rich AJAX-enabled administration console running on Rails.

If you are relatively familiar with the Rails framework and would like
to get involved, please contact me. I will be happy to give some more
information on the intended product.

Thanks,

Erik

[Luc Boudreau]

Hi Erik,

It's kind of hard to figure exactly what your idea will be implemented as. An administrative interface is not a product in itself and never will be; it obviously has to administer something. By "network appliance", what did you mean exactly ? A software based router ? An online programmable automaton ? Maybe a bit more details could help us decide if we want to join you on your endeavour.

Luc

2008/2/12, Erik Wright <er...@erikwright.com>:

[Erik Wright]

Hi Luc,

Of course you are right that an administrative interface is not a
product. The overall product itself is related to identity management,
access control, federation, and single-sign on. It is designed to not
only fulfil the existing role of the corporate directory but also to
act as a platform for the use of SaaS (software-as-a-service).

With regards to the first goal, I am looking at providing as close to
an "out of the box" and user-friendly identity management (IDM)
solution as possible. The product will be targeted at small-to-medium
enterprises (SMEs, 200-500 employees) as an alternative to, for
example, Active Directory.

The administrative interface I mentioned would be used to managing
accounts and access privileges. Nothing revolutionary, unless you have
recently taken a look at the off-the-shelf IDM products and seen how
terrible their interfaces are and how expensive they are to buy and
integrate.

The second goal is to use the product as a platform for federated
access to SaaS tools like Salesforce.com, Google Apps, hosted FogBugz,
Taleo, StandoutJobs, CakeMail, and so on. I believe that difficulty of
integration, security concerns, and poor user experience are hindering
the adoption of SaaS. The product that I envision will enable SMEs to
easily integrate these tools into their operations, all while
increasing security and improving user experience.

I encourage you, or anyone else who is interested, to get in contact
with me for further discussion.

Thanks,

Erik

On Feb 13, 9:37 am, "Luc Boudreau" <lucboudr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Erik,
>
> It's kind of hard to figure exactly what your idea will be implemented as.
> An administrative interface is not a product in itself and never will be; it
> obviously has to administer something. By "network appliance", what did you
> mean exactly ? A software based router ? An online programmable automaton ?
> Maybe a bit more details could help us decide if we want to join you on your
> endeavour.
>
> Luc
>

> 2008/2/12, Erik Wright <e...@erikwright.com>:

[Luc Boudreau]

Considering your second objective, wasn't there already such an iniciative ? OpenID just released a communiqué 5 days ago saying :

This morning the OpenID Foundation announced that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! have joined the board.

These are pretty big players on the web. Still, I agree that current "enterprise directories" lack an efficient interface to manage them. Maybe a bridge between between OpenID identities, group management and LDAP services could be more useful than yet another authentication system... just thinking out loud.
 

Luc

2008/2/13, Erik Wright <er...@erikwright.com>:

--
_____________________________
Luc Boudreau

[Erik Wright]

Hi Luc,

OpenID is a great technology. I have implemented it myself, both as an
IdP and as an SP.

Keep in mind that an Identity must "start" somewhere. You can use an
OpenID to log-in to Google Apps, but who hosts the ID? Who ultimately
authenticates you? It could be a public provider (GetOpenID.com,
MyOpenID.com, etc.), it could be an existing community (LiveJournal),
or it could be your employer (Sun: http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2007-05/sunflash.20070507.4.xml).

Let's say that Google starts accepting OpenID as authentication for
GoogleApps. Your small company decides to use GoogleApps instead of MS
Office. Are they going to tell all of their employees to go create an
Open ID somewhere else? Who will guarantee that the OpenID provider is
secured according to the corporate standards? What happens if the
OpenID provider is hacked? Who will take the list of 200+ OpenIDs and
log-in to the Google Apps administrative portal to manually grant each
of them permission to use the application? When you quit (or are
fired) who will remember to revoke your OpenID's access to the
corporate documents?

In other words, OpenID is only one part of the solution.

On the other hand, let's say you are running a small business and you
can buy an appliance that lets you manage all of your employee
accounts, control access to email etc., and provide a built-in OpenID
IdP for enabling SSO access to OpenID enabled applications?

Let's say that this appliance is easier to use and costs significantly
less than Active Directory?

-Erik

On Feb 13, 1:32 pm, "Luc Boudreau" <lucboudr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Considering your second objective, wasn't there already such an iniciative ?
> OpenID just released a communiqué 5 days ago saying :
>

> This morning the OpenID Foundation <http://openid.net/foundation/> announced
>
> > that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! have joined the board<http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=818650>
> > .

>
> These are pretty big players on the web. Still, I agree that current
> "enterprise directories" lack an efficient interface to manage them. Maybe a
> bridge between between OpenID identities, group management and LDAP services
> could be more useful than yet another authentication system... just thinking
> out loud.
>
> Luc
>

> 2008/2/13, Erik Wright <e...@erikwright.com>:

[Erik Wright]

> Maybe a bridge between between OpenID identities, group management and LDAP services
> could be more useful than yet another authentication system...

In re-reading this comment, I think we are ultimately on the same
page.

I'll suggest that we take the rest of the conversation off-line since
this is definitely no longer a Montreal on Rails topic.

Thanks for your comments!

-Erik

[Luc Boudreau]

Hi Erik,

Thanks for the clarification. So, your application would be used to manage (for example) a LDAP server via RoR ? Or do you plan to create a complete user database to back it ? Or this part is not defined yet, I suppose. Anyway, I'm interrested in your project. Maybe we could continue this discussion off the MoR list.

Cheers

Luc


PS. For the record, there is a bridge currently available for people who would like to publish their LDAP registry and use it as an OpenID endpoint. More details here : http://www.openid-ldap.org/

2008/2/13, Erik Wright <er...@erikwright.com>:

[Andy Maleh]

Count me in.

Andy Maleh

Blog: http://andymaleh.blogspot.com

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andy-maleh/2/511/547

Twitter: @AndyMaleh