"The LDAP Guys."

About Symas™

Symas™ Corporation was founded in 1999. The Founders set out to develop industry-leading and proprietary User Management software. The challenge of collecting, organizing, and auditing all the information about who has access to enterprise information technology is daunting. None of the offerings at the time offered practical solutions and the founders of Symas had an approach that offered unique advantages and real hope of tackling the challenge. This class of technology presents database challenges poorly addressed by Relational Data Base Management Systems (RDBMSs). They require the sophistication and power of directory data base management software. Symas elected to base its development on OpenLDAP.

In 1999, the OpenLDAP project was quite young. OpenLDAP was working to prepare the University of Michigan's Open Source LDAP server software for significant refactoring and improvement. Starting from the beginning, Symas contributed continuously to the OpenLDAP project as a maintainer and developer. OpenLDAP proved a worthy base technology and readily supported Symas's early development efforts.

In 2000 and 2001, the information technology market was more focused on the Internet and its potentialities. Overloaded by high-priority projects driven by the Internet boom, enterprises were not exploring new technologies for security and User Management. Symas's early versions of the User Management software readily proved its potential but failed to gain traction as the Internet bubble reached its bursting point. The company evolved to survive the Dot-Bomb, doing custom programming, consulting, and continuing to provide enhancements and updates to OpenLDAP. Today, Symas is committed to helping enterprises introduce new directory database applications for security, identity and network management and assisting them in converting their existing directories off of older proprietary directory products.

As enterprise demand has increased, Symas has responded by increasing its support and strengthening its commercial OpenLDAP offerings. The result is Connexitor™ Directory Services (CDS), the leading distribution of OpenLDAP and associated Open Source technologies. HP recognized that Symas was the leading Open Source Directory software provider and has adopted CDS as a component in their Open Source Middleware Stack. HP has also certified CDS for use in all of its OpenView Identity Management products. Companies like Sendmail, MDSI, and Fidelity National Information Systems rely on Symas and CDS for directory technology integrated into their offerings.

Founder Biographies

Howard Chu (Chief Architect): Specialist in distributed information technologies including X.500/LDAP at U. Michigan. Experience at JPL, Locus Computing, and Platinum Technologies. Member of the OpenLDAP Core Team.

Matthew Hardin (CTO): Core developer and development executive for user management, networking and file management products at Locus and Platinum Technologies.

Marty Heyman (President): Marketing and Development Executive at IBM, Locus Computing, Palyn-Gould Group and two software start-ups since acquired by Microsoft and EMC.

Charles Noland (CEO): Banker and financial analyst in software and bio-tech. Consultant to start-ups seeking funding including executive role in early phase bio-tech venture.