Our clients have been asking us for some time now to increase our presence on this side of the Atlantic, Cole says. While clients value the groups unique European perspective and thought leadership, adding local feel and color will help KuppingerCole provide more intensive analysis and advisory services to vendors and users based in the United States and Canada, thus improving service value.
Given that the identity industry is largely based in the Western Hemisphere, KuppingerCole also expects to shorten its lines of communication in order to ensure that clients receive the most timely information available about new trends and developments in the groups core competence fields such as Identity & Access Management (IAM), Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), IT Risk Management, Authentication and Authorization, Single Sign-On, Federation, User Centric Identity Management, eID cards, Cloud Security and Management, and Virtualization.
About a third of the attendees at our marquee event, the European Identity Conference in Munich, are already Americans or Canadians, Cole maintains, so moving closer to them definitely makes sense. By establishing a physical presence in the U.S., KuppingerCole will also be able to work even closer with many of the startup vendors as well as with user companies in search of expert analysis and evaluation of products and services in this field.
Founded in 2004, Kuppinger Cole stands for expertise, thought leadership, and vendor-neutral evaluation of all segments of the information security market. The group provides research and analysis services as well as advisory and coaching services to industry and businesses concerned about better securing their core processes and user information in the face of growing threats from cybercriminals and increasing pressure from regulators, lawmakers and auditors to provide and run consistent, transparent and compliant IT systems and services efficiently over digital networks.
Based in Boston the halfway point between the U.S. West Coast and Europe, as Cole jokingly describes it, the new U.S. office will also give KuppingerCole opportunity to network with qualified researchers and analysts in order to reinforce the groups existing team of experts in Europe.