Microsoft Entra ID vs NetIQ Identity Manager comparison

Microsoft and OpenText are both solutions in the Identity Management (IM) category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7, while OpenText is ranked #18 with an average rating of 7.7. Microsoft holds a 12.5% mindshare in IAM, compared to OpenText’s 1.9% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of OpenText users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

NetIQ Identity Manager and Microsoft Entra ID are products competing in the identity management solutions category. Microsoft Entra ID has gained an advantage due to its comprehensive features and perceived value, although it may have higher costs.

Features: NetIQ Identity Manager is recognized for its robust attribute synchronization, event-driven provisioning, and flexible integration capabilities. Microsoft Entra ID is distinguished by its advanced security features, scalability, and seamless integration within Microsoft's ecosystem.

Room for Improvement: NetIQ Identity Manager could enhance its cloud capabilities, improve the user interface, and expand integration with third-party services. Microsoft Entra ID could benefit from improved customer service, more competitive pricing, and simplifying customization processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetIQ offers a structured deployment model aimed to minimize disruption, complemented by personalized customer support. Microsoft Entra ID's cloud-first deployment model ensures swift integration within Microsoft environments, though its customer service tends to be viewed as standard.

Pricing and ROI: NetIQ Identity Manager generally offers a lower initial setup cost and a favorable ROI for environments with specific customizations, whereas Microsoft Entra ID might require higher upfront investment but offers substantial ROI through comprehensive feature delivery aligned with Microsoft services.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Entra ID vs. NetIQ Identity Manager Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Entra ID vs. NetIQ Identity Manager

March 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 844,944 peers since 2012

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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Identity Management (IM) category, the mindshare of Omada Identity is 3.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 12.5%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetIQ Identity Manager is 1.9%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Identity Management (IM)

Featured Reviews

Pernilla Hulth

IAM Project Manager (Independent) at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

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.

Read full review

Aaron Liang

System engineer at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees

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.

Read full review

SYAMSUL SALAM

Solutions Architect at Pos DIgicert Sdn Bhd

The product is affordable and easy to use, but the technical support must be improved

The solution is used to manage SSO and login for internal applications The product enables detailed user management. The product is easy to use. Our users found it easier than Microsoft Identity Manager. The solution must add more configurations. There are different types of user identity in…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Omada's best feature is creating accounts, automatically assigning permissions, and distributing resources based on assignment policies."

"The administrative features and SoD are valuable."

"User-friendly solution."

"Technically, the product does everything one would expect from an identity and access management platform. The product offers robust handling of Active Directory resources."

"I appreciate all the support we receive from Omada."

"The Governance and self-service that can be set up so you can use them yourself to work in the system are the most valuable features. End users can be enabled to help themselves."

"The most valuable feature is the automatic provisioning and reconciliation of things like the Active Directory groups and memberships."

"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."

More Omada Identity pros

"The most valuable feature is that it is very easy to implement, you don't need a lot of effort to set up the solution. This is the most advantageous point, that you can do anything on Azure without taking too much time."

"We have not had any formal issues with scalability."

"The scalability is quite good."

"Entra ID provides an excellent overview of the applications and the options applied to them."

"A use case that we did for an end user in a manufacturing organization: We used WVD with biometric authentication because 1,500 processes need to happen in a process. The user didn't want to use a login using their credentials. They wanted to use fingerprinting or tap their ID. That is where we integrated with the authentication. Now, they can process in a couple of hours, and they run those 1,500 processes every day. This changed their login process, which improved the manufacturing process. This helped a lot for their high deployment."

"Azure Active Directory features have helped improve our security posture. The remote working has been a massive help during the pandemic."

"The solution allows users to authenticate from home, and the Office 360 integration is advantageous."

"The solution has come a long way. Now, with the Azure AD B2C offering integrated as well, we've got a full IAM-type solution for our customer-facing identity management. In addition, when it comes to user journeys we now can hook in custom flows for different credential checking and authorizations for specific conditional access."

More Microsoft Entra ID pros

"It's a very flexible tool, so you can synchronize multiple sources of data and you have multiple connections to various kinds of systems."

"The most valuable feature of this solution has been the ability for us to integrate a lot of external systems, and the automatic transfer of a lot of identity information. Additionally, the customization is very good."

"The access request management has improved significantly in terms of its user interface. What sets it apart from competitors like SailPoint is that it's an event-based solution rather than schedule-based. That's a key differentiator."

"The most valuable feature of NetIQ Identity Manager for identity synchronization is the ability to provide users with all necessary access on day one through automated provisioning, facilitated by approval workflows."

"NetIQ does not have a limit on the number of users."

"I like the eDirectory feature."

"The most valuable features of NetIQ Identity Manager are the synchronization of different directories, such as Active Directory. We have many Active Directory systems, not only one."

"The product is easy to use."

More NetIQ Identity Manager pros

Cons

"I would like more training. As someone who is new to this world, I don't feel that the courses Omada provides are good enough. They should also improve the documentation. It is difficult to learn how to use the solution by yourself"

"We are still on Omada on-prem, but I understand that when Omada is in the cloud, you cannot send an attachment via email. We have some emails with attachments for new employees because we have to explain to them how to register and do their multi-factor authentication. All that information is in the attachment. People have to do that before they are in our system. We cannot give them a link to our Intranet and SharePoint because they do not yet have access. They have to register before that, so I need to send the attachments, but this functionality is not there in the cloud."

"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."

"The user interface could be improved. The interface between Omada and the user is mainly text-based."

"Omada's performance could be better because we had some latency issues. Still, it's difficult to say how much of that is due to Omada versus the resources used by our other vendors in our on-prem environment. Considering the resources we have invested into making it run well, it's slightly slower than we would expect."

"Documentation can be improved. I have already filed a few suggestions to make documentation more clear and more representative of reality."

"I would like to see them expand the functionality of the tool to continue to be competitive with the monsters out there. For example, they could add functionality on the authentication side, functionality that Octa and SailPoint have. But they should do that while maintaining the same simplicity that makes Omada a product of choice today."

"In our organization, all the data is event-driven, which means that if an attribute is changed in the source system, it can be updated within a few seconds in all end-user systems. There is room for improvement in Omada regarding that. Omada is still batch-based for some processes, so sometimes it can take an hour or even four hours before the execution is run and the update is sent."

More Omada Identity cons

"There is a lot of room for improvement in terms of its integration with the local Active Directory. There are some gaps in terms of the local Active Directory through which Microsoft is syncing our environment from our data center. There should be the availability of custom attributes on Azure Active Directory. In addition, there should be the availability of security groups and distribution groups that are residing on the local Active Directory. Currently, they are not replicated on Azure Active Directory by default."

"Its area of improvement is more about the synchronization of accounts and the intervals for that. Sometimes, there're customers with other network challenges, and it takes a while for synchronization to happen to the cloud. There is some component of their on-prem that is delaying things getting to the cloud. The turnaround time for these requests is very time-sensitive. I don't mean this as derogatory for this service, but in my experience, that happens a lot."

"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."

"Microsoft needs to make improvements in this regard and extend its services to other operating systems as well, especially when considering their widespread usage."

"The Cloud Provisioning Agent cannot provision a lot of the information that AD Connect does. For starters, the lightweight version cannot synchronize device information. If you have computers on-premises, the information about them will not be synchronized by the Cloud Provisioning Agent. In addition, if you have a user on the cloud and he changes his password, that information should be written back to the on-premises instance. But that workflow cannot be done with the lightweight agent. It can only be done with the more robust version."

"Microsoft Entra ID's impact on access and identity management is relatively limited."

"The automation aspects of Entra ID could be improved, particularly when automating through different providers and SDKs."

"The role-based access control can be improved. Normally, the role-based access control has different privileges. Each role, such as administrator or user, has different privileges, and the setup rules for them should be defined automatically rather than doing it manually."

More Microsoft Entra ID cons

"Areas for improvement are further enhancing the access granting process to reduce time and improve accuracy."

"If it could be operated in such a way that anybody could use it, with just the user interface, and there's no need for programming, then that would be a great improvement."

"NetIQ Identity Manager could improve by updating the user portal, it is out of date."

"The solution architecture is somewhat complex. For some components, the necessary resilience is not inherent."

"The interface is old and outdated, and the design software seems archaic."

"There's no huge thing missing, because it's already comprehensive. Now and then, however, there might be a minor issue."

"The integrations must be made easier."

"We have another system that is using the SAML system, and we also integrate with Active Directory only. If NetIQ Identity Manager can integrate directly, we would not need to use the Active Directory directory."

More NetIQ Identity Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Omada Identity offers a reasonable price point, but it will increase as we transition to the cloud."

"The pricing is okay."

"It is not cheap. None of these solutions are cheap, but we have good pricing at least for now from a licensing perspective."

"It is fairly priced for an on-premise environment, but for the cloud environment, I am not that happy with the pricing."

"Omada isn't cheap or expensive. The licensing model is flexible. I've only had limited interactions with the Omada sales team, but they were positive. They don't sell the customers more licenses than they need. It's important to accurately forecast future usage. For example, we have many licenses that we don't use because we don't have the identities yet. We pay extra, which isn't good."

"Omada continues to be very competitive on pricing, especially on the Omada cloud product."

"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."

"Omada Identity is very reasonably and competitively priced."

More Omada Identity pricing and cost advice

"The price is affordable, and we pay around $100 per month."

"The price of Azure Active Directory and Amazon AWS, are almost the same, but most people prefer Amazon AWS because they find it's a little cheaper to some extent and an easier platform to use."

"We make sure that we only enable the licenses that are needed for the users, rather than enabling licenses in a blanket fashion."

"The pricing for companies and businesses is okay, it's fair. But if you are trying to teach someone about Azure AD, there is no licensing option for that... It would be nice to have a 'learning' license, one that is cheaper for a single person."

"The E5 plan we are using contains the premium plans for Azure Active Directory. We are not paying only for the Azure Active Directory Premium licenses. We have it already included within our E5 plan."

"The cost is billed on a per-user licensing basis."

"The licensing cost is a bit prohibitive."

"Microsoft is so expensive. You know it is expensive when a Fortune 100 company like ours is complaining about the cost. That has been a big thing for me. When I really want to use an Azure service, it is very hard for me to justify the cost, especially with Microsoft support."

More Microsoft Entra ID pricing and cost advice

"The solution is quite affordable."

"The price of the solution is a bit high and could be reduced."

"You just need to be aware that the more systems you connect, the more license fees you have to pay."

"It would easily help them in getting more market and more customers if more consultants knew about their software. If they could keep it free for schools for teaching purposes, it would be good. I had to pay myself to get it and use it for training. Their competitors are giving it for free. I had to pay for it myself. They are losing market to their competitors."

"Micro Focus is flexible when it comes to price. The cost varies from customer to customer. There are no additional costs, though. Everything is included."

"I would rate the pricing a two out of ten, with one being low price and ten being high price. It is significantly more cost-effective than the major players in the market."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Identity Management (IM) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

33%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?

We are an enterprise customer with an enterprise agreement in place with many of our partner companies, so there are ...

See all answers

What do you like most about NetIQ Identity Manager?

The most valuable feature of NetIQ Identity Manager for identity synchronization is the ability to provide users with...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetIQ Identity Manager?

The pricing depends on whether we buy the solution as a service or a license. The license is expensive. If we buy it ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetIQ Identity Manager?

The tool is used mostly in big systems to understand what is happening. There are not many technicians who know how t...

See all answers

Comparisons

SailPoint Identity Security Cloud vs Omada Identity

Compared 30% of the time

Saviynt vs Omada Identity

Compared 17% of the time

One Identity Manager vs Omada Identity

Compared 7% of the time

SAP Identity Management vs Omada Identity

Compared 6% of the time

Ping Identity Platform vs Omada Identity

Compared 4% of the time

More Omada Identity Competitors

Microsoft Intune vs Microsoft Entra ID

Compared 11% of the time

Google Cloud Identity vs Microsoft Entra ID

Compared 10% of the time

Okta Workforce Identity vs Microsoft Entra ID

Compared 9% of the time

Auth0 vs Microsoft Entra ID

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon Cognito vs Microsoft Entra ID

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Entra ID Competitors

SailPoint Identity Security Cloud vs NetIQ Identity Manager

Compared 35% of the time

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs NetIQ Identity Manager

Compared 17% of the time

One Identity Manager vs NetIQ Identity Manager

Compared 10% of the time

Saviynt vs NetIQ Identity Manager

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Identity Manager vs NetIQ Identity Manager

Compared 6% of the time

More NetIQ Identity Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Omada Identity

March 2025

Download Omada Identity product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Entra ID

March 2025

Download Microsoft Entra ID product report

Buyer's Guide

NetIQ Identity Manager

March 2025

Download NetIQ Identity Manager product report

Also Known As

Omada Identity Suite, Omada Identity Cloud

Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator

Novell Identity Manager

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Omada

Microsoft

Demo not available

OpenText

Overview

Omada Identity is an identity governance and administration (IGA) solution designed to help organizations manage and secure digital identities and access across their IT environments. It focuses on enhancing security, compliance, and efficiency by automating identity management processes.

Omada Identity offers a robust set of features that streamline identity lifecycle management, access governance, and compliance reporting. It integrates with a wide range of IT systems, applications, and data sources, providing a centralized platform for managing user identities and access rights. The solution enables organizations to enforce security policies, ensure regulatory compliance, and reduce the risk of unauthorized access.

What are the critical features of Omada Identity?

Identity Lifecycle Management: Automates the process of creating, updating, and deactivating user identities throughout their lifecycle.
Access Governance: Ensures that users have appropriate access rights, enabling continuous monitoring and recertification of access.
Compliance Reporting: Provides comprehensive reporting capabilities to demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements.
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Simplifies the assignment and management of access rights based on user roles within the organization.
Self-Service Access Requests: Empowers users to request access to resources through a user-friendly portal, reducing administrative burden.
Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly integrates with various systems, applications, and data sources for unified identity and access management.

What benefits or ROI items should users look for in the reviews when evaluating Omada Identity?

Improved Security: By ensuring that only authorized users have access to sensitive information, Omada Identity enhances overall security posture.
Regulatory Compliance: Helps organizations meet compliance requirements by providing detailed audit trails and reporting features.
Operational Efficiency: Automates routine identity management tasks, reducing manual effort and freeing up IT resources for strategic initiatives.
User Productivity: Streamlines access management processes, enabling users to quickly obtain the resources they need to perform their jobs.
Reduced Risk: Minimizes the risk of data breaches and insider threats by enforcing strict access controls and continuous monitoring.

Omada Identity is widely adopted across various industries, including healthcare, finance, and manufacturing. In healthcare, it helps protect patient data and comply with regulations like HIPAA. In finance, it ensures compliance with SOX and other financial regulations. In manufacturing, it secures access to sensitive production data and intellectual property.

Pricing and licensing for Omada Identity are typically based on the number of users and the specific features required. Customer support is available through various channels, including online resources, support tickets, and professional services for implementation and customization.

In summary, Omada Identity is a comprehensive IGA solution that enhances security, compliance, and efficiency in managing digital identities and access.

Omada

Microsoft Entra ID is used for extending on-premises Active Directory to the cloud, managing application access, enabling multi-factor authentication, and single sign-on. It facilitates policy enforcement and secure access, ensuring centralized identity management across cloud and on-premises resources.

Organizations utilize Microsoft Entra ID for robust user and group management, identity synchronization, and conditional access. Its seamless integration with third-party apps, scalability, and support for remote work make it a preferred choice. The admin center streamlines identity and access tasks, enhancing efficiency and security with features like privileged identity management and audit logs.

What are the key features of Microsoft Entra ID?

Single Sign-On: Simplifies user access to multiple applications with one login.
Multifactor Authentication: Enhances security by requiring additional verification.
Conditional Access: Establishes policies that determine how users' access cloud apps.
Integration: Easily integrates with various third-party applications.
User Identity Protection: Safeguards user identities from threats.
Privileged Identity Management: Manages elevated access to sensitive resources.
Audit Logs: Provides thorough activity logs for oversight and compliance.

What benefits should users look for in Microsoft Entra ID reviews?

Enhanced Security: Offers strong multifactor authentication and identity protection.
Administrative Efficiency: Simplifies identity and access management tasks.
Scalability: Supports growing user bases and remote work environments.
Integration Capabilities: Compatible with numerous third-party applications.
User-Friendly Interface: Makes managing user identities straightforward.

Microsoft Entra ID implementation varies across industries. Tech firms leverage it for secure, scalable access management, while healthcare organizations utilize its identity protection features to safeguard patient data. Educational institutions adopt Entra ID for streamlined user management and policy enforcement, ensuring secure access for students and staff across on-premises and cloud resources.

Microsoft

NetIQ Identity Manager delivers a complete, yet affordable solution to control who has access to what across your enterprise both inside the firewall and into the cloud. It enables you to provide secure and convenient access to critical information for business users, while meeting compliance demands.

OpenText

Sample Customers

Bayer, ECCO Shoes, Vattenfall, NuStar Energy, Unicredit, Schiphol Group, BMW Group, Deutsche Leasing

Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.

Sheetz

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Entra ID vs. NetIQ Identity Manager

March 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Entra ID vs. NetIQ Identity Manager

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Entra ID vs. NetIQ Identity Manager and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Microsoft Entra ID vs. NetIQ Identity Manager report.

See our list of best Identity Management (IM) vendors.

We monitor all Identity Management (IM) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.