Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM Security Verify Access vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Omada Identity
Sponsored
Ranking in Identity Management (IM)
4th
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (3rd), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (3rd)
IBM Security Verify Access
Ranking in Identity Management (IM)
25th
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (14th), Access Management (13th)
Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Identity Management (IM)
1st
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
225
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (1st), Authentication Systems (1st), Access Management (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Pernilla Hulth - PeerSpot reviewer
The interface is easy to use and gives you a solid overview
The cloud-based deployment was straightforward, but the on-prem deployment was in a highly complex ecosystem. Omada has matured since then. I wouldn't say that it isn't straightforward, but it depends on the customer. A standard deployment is relatively easy, but it can be more painful if you need a lot of customization. We deployed the cloud solution in around four months, nearly meeting the 12-week benchmark. The on-prem deployment took three years. It was a highly complex ecosystem that was dependent on other systems. Depending on the size of your environment, you need a product owner and some specialists for maintenance. My last customer was a university with a complex environment. They had around 12 people involved in maintenance at that organization. Typically, it's between 2-5 people.
AsifIqbal - PeerSpot reviewer
Has good scalability and is stable with no glitches; has a multi-factor authentication feature
What we'd like improved in IBM Security Access Manager is its onboarding process as it's complex, particularly when onboarding new applications. We need to be very, very careful during the onboarding. We have no issues with IBM Security Access Manager because the solution works fine, apart from the onboarding process and IBM's involvement in onboarding issues. If we need support related to the onboarding, we've noticed a pattern where support isn't available, or they don't have much experience, or we're not getting a response from them. We're facing the same issue with IBM Guardium. As we're just focusing on the multi-factor authentication feature of IBM Security Access Manager and we didn't explore any other features, we don't have additional features to suggest for the next release of the solution, but we're in discussion about exploring ID management and access management features, but those are just possibilities because right now, we're focused on exploring our domain.
Aaron Liang - PeerSpot reviewer
Has significantly improved secure access to applications and resources in our environment
Microsoft Entra ID has helped by simplifying our management of permissions for APIs. We are not directly exposing credentials, as we use tokens instead. It has made management easier and more secure, especially in a multi-user environment. The implementation of Microsoft Entra ID significantly improved secure access to applications and resources in our environment, primarily through the widespread use of single-sign-on. Managing API permissions became much easier, as application registration often involves calling an API to utilize services without directly exposing credentials, relying instead on token-based authentication. This streamlined approach benefits end-users by simplifying access while remaining transparent to them. Ultimately, my role focuses on ensuring a smooth and user-friendly experience, even if the underlying technology remains unseen by the end-users. Our company strongly emphasizes passwordless authentication, primarily through device-bound passkeys in Microsoft Authenticator. While administrators with high-privileged accounts utilize YubiKeys and passwords for tasks like accessing Microsoft Graph, we are actively transitioning all other users towards passwordless methods such as Windows Hello biometrics. This approach streamlines authentication and enhances security. Though initial deployment in 2022 presented challenges due to hardware limitations and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the technology has significantly improved and provides a simple and effective user experience.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Technically, the product does everything one would expect from an identity and access management platform. The product offers robust handling of Active Directory resources."
"Omada's user interface is elegant and easy to work with. I like Omada's ability to automatically generate accounts for new hires and allow them access to all required systems by established policies. Around 80 percent of workers can start working immediately on their first day without requesting further access."
"Its best feature is definitely the process design. It is quite easy and straightforward to design a process."
"The key benefit of Omada Identity is maintaining complete control."
"Omada Identity Suite has a very powerful workflow engine. It is used for requesting access for approval to everything that's around Access Management and for re-certification purposes."
"Omada's onboarding features reflect our processes for onboarding new employees well. That is the primary reason we use this solution. We use role-based access control. I'm not sure how much it has improved our security posture, but it's made managing identities more convenient."
"Omada's best feature is creating accounts, automatically assigning permissions, and distributing resources based on assignment policies."
"User-friendly solution."
"The solution has powerful authentification and authorization. It offers a good way to increase security."
"I have found this solution to be really practical and when a user wants to log in, it is effortless and runs smooth."
"Its stability and UI are most valuable."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Security Access Manager, at least for my company, is multi-factor authentication. That's the only feature my company is using. The solution works well and has no glitches. IBM Security Access Manager is a very good solution, so my company is still using it."
"From the integration point of view, it supports SAML, OIDC, and OAuth. For legacy applications that don't have support for SAML and other new protocols, it provides single sign-on access to end-users. From the integration compatibility point of view, it is highly capable."
"It's a good solution for identification and access management."
"The tool provides a password vault, single sign-on, and multifactor authentication. It offers various authentication methods like fingerprint integration, one-time passwords, or tokens sent via email or SMS. This ensures secure access to your accounts by providing multiple authentication options."
"We need something that makes an attacker's life harder."
"The most valuable features are the Conditional Access policies, SSPR, and MFA. Another good functionality is registering enterprise applications to provide access to external parties. These four features are precious and are the most used across different use cases for various clients and projects."
"Entra ID can be deployed using a hybrid model for organizations with a significant on-premises presence, or in a fully cloud-based setup for those that do not."
"Entra ID enables us to implement security easily and effectively."
"Privilege identity management is the most valuable feature."
"Overall, I think the support and the pictorial format of this web portal are very good."
"It's very user-friendly for users."
"The ability to see and control PCs and mobile devices is the most valuable. I can see where they are and how many we have. I can also see the age and retention of PCs."
 

Cons

"The user interface should have a more flexible design, where you can change it to your requirement."
"The UI design needs improvement. One or two years ago, Omada changed its user interface to simplify, but the simplification has not really kicked in."
"One thing that we are not so happy about is the user interface. It is a bit dated. I know that they are working on that, but the user interface is quite dated. Currently, it is a little bit difficult to customize the user interface to the need of the business, which is a little bit disappointing. It needs it to be a little bit easier to operate, and it should have a better user interface."
"The solution should be made more agile for customers to own or configure."
"It is not possible to customize reports on Omada Identity."
"Omada could communicate better with us about the product roadmap. We haven't gotten any updates about it. The user interface is often a bit difficult to understand. It isn't optimized for small screens, so it doesn't display all of the information clearly, so users need to scroll a lot."
"Documentation can be improved. I have already filed a few suggestions to make documentation more clear and more representative of reality."
"I am not working with the product, but they have this BI tool for role-based mining, and I think that should be included in the core product rather than an add-on."
"Configuration could be simplified for the end-user."
"The solution could be classified as a hilt system. There are a lot of resources being used and it is suitable for very large enterprises or the public sector."
"There are a lot of areas that can be improved, but the main area is the lack of customization. You cannot easily customize anything in the product. It is not easy to tweak the functionality. It is challenging to change the out-of-the-box functionality."
"The user interface needs to be simplified, it's complex and not user-friendly."
"What we'd like improved in IBM Security Access Manager is its onboarding process as it's complex, particularly when onboarding new applications. We need to be very, very careful during the onboarding. We have no issues with IBM Security Access Manager because the solution works fine, apart from the onboarding process and IBM's involvement in onboarding issues. If we need support related to the onboarding, we've noticed a pattern where support isn't available, or they don't have much experience, or we're not getting a response from them. We're facing the same issue with IBM Guardium. As we're just focusing on the multi-factor authentication feature of IBM Security Access Manager and we didn't explore any other features, we don't have additional features to suggest for the next release of the solution, but we're in discussion about exploring ID management and access management features, but those are just possibilities because right now, we're focused on exploring our domain."
"They can improve the single sign-on configuration for OIDC and OAuth. That is not very mature in this product, and they can improve it in this particular area. OIDC is a third-party integration that we do with the cloud platforms, and OAuth is an authorization mechanism for allowing a user having an account with Google or any other provider to access an application. Organizations these days are looking for just-in-time provisioning use cases, but IBM Security Access Manager is not very mature for such use cases. There are only a few applications that can be integrated, and this is where this product is lagging. However, in terms of configuration and single sign-on mechanisms, it is a great product."
"The user interface for users and administrators could be improved to make it easier. Automating some functions could also be beneficial."
"We previously used Microsoft's technical support, which was excellent; they were very responsive. Now, we use a CSP, and their support is lacking, so I rate them five out of ten."
"The dashboard and interface could be better. It would be ideal if it was easier to use."
"I suggest improving the connector part. For technical users like me, it is manageable, but having comprehensive documentation for those who aren't familiar with the system would be beneficial."
"The documentation could be better."
"Four years ago, we had an issue with Azure AD. We wanted to reverse sync from Azure AD to on-prem Active Directory, but we couldn't achieve this. Azure AD could connect only in one way, for example, from your site to Azure. If you needed to do the reverse and connect from Azure to on-prem, there was no way to achieve it. We asked Microsoft, and they told us that they don't support it."
"Customers want to know exactly where they are spending their money, allowing them to assess and potentially save money in those specific areas."
"In a hybrid deployment, when we update a license by changing the UPN or email address of a user, it does not get updated automatically during normal sync. This means that we have to update it manually from Azure, which is something that needs to be corrected."
"The implementation of other third-party MFA such as Okta or Duo could be improved, even though Duo is integratable. The response from actual support tickets is a bit laggy, and I would like them to be more responsive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Omada Identity is very reasonably and competitively priced."
"My client deals directly with the Omada Identity team in terms of licensing. I never look at pricing, so I'm not aware of how much the solution costs, but it's worth the money. Often, when you begin to use Omada Identity and it takes a while to set up, it'll be irreversible, and you'd depend on and focus more on the functionality of the solution, rather than its price tag."
"The pricing for Omada Identity is fair."
"There were a lot of administrator, partner, and supplier accounts for people who were no longer working for us but still in the system. So, we reduced the number of users no longer with the company, which saved us some money on licensing."
"Being Dutch, I can only say that it is extremely expensive, but all software products are expensive. If you have 38,000 users, then even one dollar or one euro per person would amount to a significant amount of money. Because of the high number of users, anything gets expensive very fast here."
"They are positioned at a good price point. They are lower than some of their competitors."
"Omada Identity is competitively priced and delivers good value for our money."
"Omada Identity offers a reasonable price point, but it will increase as we transition to the cloud."
"The product is not expensive. It depends on the number of users."
"It costs about 300K AED for a year. Its pricing is a bit on the higher end, but in comparison to other products in the market, its price is still better. There are lots of other products that are very costly."
"The license and costs depend on the amount range of users you have. For just approximately 2,000 users, the price is practical and fair. However, when you have 20,000 users, it starts to become really expensive, and the discount per user is not attractive enough to go ahead and purchase."
"The licensing costs are yearly. There is a standard fee per user."
"As a nonprofit, we have A5 licenses for nonprofits in education, so we at least have some reduced costs."
"I think we're on the E3 — I think it was about 35 dollars per user."
"It is bundled with other services and the pricing is quite reasonable."
"The solution can be cheaper."
"The pricing is good; it's not cheap but very reasonable."
"We are working with the Premium P2 licenses, which are reasonable. If you invest in the on-premises environment setup, then it costs so much. However, on-prem AD gives you the ability to manage your organization in a very organized manner, where you can create a group policy."
"The basic tier of Azure Active Directory is free, so many users use the service for free. For a small company having the security and compliance that Azure offers is a great benefit. For small companies that are using the basic services, not having to pay for Azure Active Directory is the main asset because they can manage their users and have authentications tools and security."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Single Sign-On (SSO) solutions are best for your needs.
848,576 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Insurance Company
16%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Educational Organization
30%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Omada Identity Cloud?
As an administrator, we benefit from a lot of functionality that is available out of the box, but it is also configur...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Omada Identity Cloud?
They are positioned at a good price point. They are lower than some of their competitors.
What needs improvement with Omada Identity Cloud?
The biggest issue, which is the reason why we are transitioning from their product to SailPoint, is the overall user ...
What do you like most about IBM Security Access Manager?
The tool provides a password vault, single sign-on, and multifactor authentication. It offers various authentication ...
What needs improvement with IBM Security Access Manager?
The user interface for users and administrators could be improved to make it easier. Automating some functions could ...
How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Du...
What do you like most about Azure Active Directory?
It is very simple. The Active Directory functions are very easy for us. Its integration with anything is very easy. W...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?
Microsoft Entra ID is reportedly quite expensive for each user regarding security features. The renewal cost is parti...
 

Also Known As

Omada Identity Suite, Omada Identity Cloud
IBM Security Verify Access (SVA), IBM Security Access Manager, ISAM
Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bayer, ECCO Shoes, Vattenfall, NuStar Energy, Unicredit, Schiphol Group, BMW Group, Deutsche Leasing
POST Luxembourg
Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security Verify Access vs. Microsoft Entra ID and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,576 professionals have used our research since 2012.