[Network World] looked at Symplifed for identity management exclusively targeted to SaaS-based apps, Puppet Labs for virtual machine deployment, HP for building and managing private clouds, Abiquo for IaaS platform management and TurnKey Linux for low-cost cloud backup...

Symplified Identity Manager (SIM) provides administrators with a way to deal with Web-based application identity and passwords. This is done through an "identity router" called SinglePoint. The SIM product, in turn, manages identity for users with SaaS applications.

The SaaS applications covered include LinkedIn, Google Apps (the business version), Salesforce and many more. Almost any Web app that has a login screen can be included, using HTTP federation.

With SAML-based SIM and SinglePoint, all of the construction of authentication is "behind the scenes" to users. Administratively, we found SIM and SinglePoint to be a little tough, but very usable once constructed...

Read the complete article in Computerworld.