We provide a number of local opportunities for our customers to interact with us, with other customers, and with Identity Management experts across the industry. If you are a customer or an Identity Management professional, you should know about Customer Advisory Boards (CABs), User Groups, and local editions of our Cloud Identity Summit.

Customer Advisory Boards, CABs, are a way for Ping Product Management and CTO staff to gather feedback from specific customers. We invite customers whose business and identity needs we particularly want to understand. Ping sets the agenda and runs the meeting.

User Groups (UGs) are local groups that meet regularly in locations around the world. These gatherings are driven by customers -- Ping facilitates and hosts these meetings, and we make technical staff available on request, but these are customer-driven sessions. Our customers have told us how much they love getting together with other IT professionals in their field to share ideas and experiences.

Finally, we have Cloud Identity Summits - Local Editions (CIS-LEs). These half-day sessions bring speakers from the annual summertime Cloud Identity Summit to select cities around the world in the fall. They are open to anyone and feature key speakers and talks from the main CIS conference.

I asked one of our Bay Area User Group members in California, Ranjan Jain, an Enterprise IT Architect at Cisco, how he would characterize the three events. Here's what he had to say:

Between the three groups, there are a few primary differences:

1. The number of people -- User Groups: 8-10, CABs: 15-20, CIS: hundreds.
2. Level of participation -- User Groups and CABs are focused and very interactive. CIS is at a broader level to give an insight on what Ping and others are doing in the ID space.
3. Sharing of information -- User Groups: mostly customers interacting. CAB: both Ping and customers. CIS: large variety of audience and companies sharing the information.

Well said, I think.