IDaaS: A New Era of Cloud Identity

The cloud has proven to be a superior mechanism to deliver ever-growing application functionality. Enterprise apps such as customer relationship management (CRM) and IT service management (ITSM) are now routinely delivered in software-as-a-service (SaaS) mode, offering ease of deployment and use. Indeed, cloud-based SaaS applications have transformed the business world: Omdia predicts that about three-quarters of enterprises will have embraced SaaS by 2021.

Identity Management Meets the Cloud

Identity management, which like CRM and ITSM began life on customer premises, has followed suit. It is no exaggeration to say that identity-as-a-service (IDaaS) is the natural evolution of “vanilla” identity and access management (IAM). This is the management of identities for business-to-employee and business-to-business environments, but not for users with privileged access (managed via a technology known as privileged access management, or PAM).

The cloud was a natural place for IAM to migrate to, enabling the technology to move from product to service, and from capex to opex. It also broadened the market beyond large enterprises that could afford traditionally complex and expensive on-premises IAM, to the midsize and even SMB segments. Large corporates, meanwhile, could use it to address the challenges of mergers and acquisitions, integrating acquired companies more easily and quickly than when they had to add all the new employees to their on-premises IAM directory.

IDaaS: Scratching the Surface

IDaaS should be considered an opportunity to streamline an organization's identity infrastructure and provide an enterprise-wide approach that deals with on-premises as well as cloud-based assets.

In recent years, the number of identity management vendors that have begun to offer fully featured IDaaS is growing, as IDaaS specialists that started out delivering cloud-only products clash with incumbent IAM platform vendors that see IDaaS as a natural extension to their core IAM portfolios, having launched cloud-based “as-a-service” SKUs to their portfolio. Some of these IAM heavyweights have no doubt also been pressured by their existing customers to add such functionality.

Lend Your Voice to the Omdia Universe Evaluation of IDaaS

Omdia is researching IDaaS products from several vendors: Okta, Idaptive, OneLogin, Microsoft, IBM, Google, Ping Identity, OpenText, Oracle, and Hitachi ID.

If you are using any of these IDaaS products, please consider sharing a review, via this TrustRadius survey link. This will ensure Omdia gets the vital voice of the user as part of its research evaluation.

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