What is our primary use case?
One Identity Manager is a software tool specifically designed to manage and govern employee identities throughout their entire lifecycle within a company. Similar to other governance tools, it ensures employees have the right access to data and applications based on their role, from the moment they are hired until they leave the organization.
How has it helped my organization?
One Identity Manager is a centralized platform for managing user access to all enterprise applications. It focuses on governing regular user identities and access permissions, but it does not handle privileged accounts. If we need to manage privileged accounts, we'll need a separate Privileged Access Management solution in addition to One Identity Manager. One Identity Manager can handle all our other identity governance needs, but privileged accounts require a different approach.
Our customization of One Identity Manager has been relatively straightforward so far. This is likely because we took the time to establish a solid architecture upfront. By defining a clear vision and utilizing standard use cases, I believe I played a key role in minimizing the need for extensive product customization. One Identity Manager also appears to scale well to our needs, further reinforcing my satisfaction with our choice.
One Identity Manager's business role feature simplifies access management by reflecting your company's structure. When you move between departments, like from marketing to finance, your access permissions automatically adjust based on your new role. This eliminates the need for manual updates, ensures you have the right access for your job, and streamlines access governance for your organization. Overall, it's a valuable tool for scaling access management across different departments and scenarios.
Many companies use pre-built solutions like SAP for specific needs. One Identity Manager acts as a central hub for managing identities and access across various cloud applications, similar to how companies connect to ServiceNow for service management or Workday for HR. This centralized approach simplifies identity governance for cloud-based applications, making One Identity Manager a valuable tool, though other competing products offer similar functionalities.
Choosing the right tool is crucial, just like picking the appropriate car. A regular car will perform well on city roads, but attempting off-roading with it will lead to breakdowns. Similarly, our company prioritizes on-premise hosting, so One Identity Manager was ideal. As One Identity itself offers on-premise updates alongside cloud features, we won't be reliant on solely cloud-based solutions for new functionalities. This ensures we stay current with identity access management advancements without being pressured to migrate to the cloud, unlike some competitors who prioritize cloud-based updates over on-premise versions. With One Identity Manager, we access all new features, giving our company a significant advantage. Ultimately, success depends on understanding your company's needs and tailoring your chosen tool accordingly.
Having separate test, development, and production environments creates challenges for managing a product. While the product itself can improve efficiency, companies need to invest in installing and maintaining it across all three environments. This can be expensive, especially for less-used environments like testing. However, if the product is installed according to best practices, it can offer significant benefits.
One Identity Manager streamlines procurement and licensing by consolidating identity management within a single platform. This is particularly advantageous because One Identity Manager is part of a broader suite of security products offered by Quest, allowing our organization to benefit from volume discounts and a unified security approach when using multiple Quest products.
One Identity Manager simplifies application governance by managing access decisions, compliance, and auditing. For access control, One Identity Manager determines a user's privileges within an application based on their overall permissions, allowing granular control over what each user can do. This same system facilitates auditing by tracking all access requests and enabling the creation of compliance certifications.
One Identity Manager empowers application owners and line of business managers to handle access governance without relying on IT. However, this requires upfront effort from the company to set up the data structure. For instance, if we don't have a process for assigning application owners, no tool can automatically create that mapping. The tool can only utilize existing data to enforce our desired workflows. This initial data setup might be challenging for our company as it's still under development.
One Identity Manager supports an identity-centric zero trust model, which assumes no inherent trust and relies on verification for every access attempt. This means every action must be audited and approved, requiring a well-structured data model. To fully utilize One Identity Manager's capabilities for identity governance, our organization will need a data engineer who can create this optimal data structure.
What is most valuable?
One Identity Manager stands out because it offers a wide range of features without requiring complex installation or ongoing maintenance. While many identity governance products necessitate external integration specialists, One Identity Manager's user-friendly interface allows internal staff with some IAM knowledge to manage it effectively after hands-on training. This is particularly beneficial because the product's pre-built lifecycle features, the core functionality of any identity governance tool, are comprehensive enough to address the needs of most companies, including larger organizations, without extensive customization.
What needs improvement?
One Identity Manager's usability could be better. While user experience isn't a top priority for enterprise applications unlike customer-facing ones where ease of use is crucial, there's still room for improvement within the industry standard. One Identity Manager is on par with competitors like SailPoint and Omada, but overall, enterprise applications tend to prioritize functionality over a sleek user experience.
One key area for improvement is implementing continuous integration and deployment. CI/CD automates deployment across environments, streamlining the process and reducing the manual effort currently required. This would move the company away from a slower, waterfall-style deployment process and improve overall efficiency.
The user interface for submitting IT requests could be more user-friendly. While there have been improvements to the look and feel since we purchased One Identity Manager, there's still room for a more customer-driven experience on the end-user portal.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using One Identity Manager for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
One Identity Manager has been stable with no downtime experienced. While the current user and transaction load is low, the system has significant capacity for increased volume and hasn't undergone any formal performance testing. However, based on real-world production use, One Identity Manager appears to be functioning well.
How are customer service and support?
We have premier technical support through the partner. We were not intelligent enough to envision this could be a problem in the future. Luckily, we have expertise in identity access management in-house. Otherwise, it would have been a problem if we didn't have local expertise internally and we bought something that we didn't know how to use and our partner wasn't efficient.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Our company is currently undergoing a split into two separate entities. Due to this unique situation, we haven't fully transitioned to a single solution. Our original company continues to utilize Omada Identity Governance, while the newly formed company will be implementing One Identity Manager. This transition process reflects the upcoming separation into two independent companies, requiring us to adapt our systems accordingly.
How was the initial setup?
Our initial on-premises deployment of One Identity Manager was straightforward because we handled the two-tier installation ourselves. However, for the cloud version, there's no installation needed since it's pre-configured as a Software-as-a-service offering. Regardless of the deployment method, the most crucial tier is the database, which needs robust security as it stores sensitive information. Both Windows and Linux installations are supported, though Windows is generally preferred.
The actual deployment process can be completed in as little as half an hour, but that's only if all the preparatory work, like opening network ports, is done beforehand. In the worst-case scenario, where you need to do all the setup from scratch, the entire deployment could take half a day.
What about the implementation team?
The implementation was completed in-house with the help of an external system integrator and a consultant from One Identity.
What was our ROI?
To an extent, we have seen a return on investment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
One Identity Manager's pricing is competitive and in line with what other companies offer. While we may have received a different pricing model due to the multiple Quest products we purchased compared to only One Identity Manager, the overall cost is considered average.
We bought the One Identity Manager license from a partner, but they weren't able to assist with implementation because they lacked experience with the product and even tried to steer us toward a different solution.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
One Identity Manager stands out for its on-premise deployment option, allowing full internal hosting, unlike most competitors who push cloud-based SaaS solutions. While cloud offers convenience, our critical infrastructure necessitates on-premise control. One Identity Manager also delivers feature parity between cloud and on-premise versions, avoiding the typical delay where new features go to the cloud first. This flexibility caters to companies with strict security requirements or those who prefer a full cloud migration, making it a truly adaptable solution. The potential downside lies in its architecture, where heavy reliance on a single database creates a single point of failure. However, other drawbacks are yet to be discovered through further use.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate One Identity Manager seven out of ten.
We don't use SAP connectors. One Identity Manager's SAP connector isn't unique; it allows connection to SAP systems like many other identity management products. While it simplifies SAP user provisioning within a centralized system, this functionality is common among competitor offerings.
There's a key distinction between privileged and normal business users. While some privileged use cases can be created, an identity governance tool like One Identity Manager, Omada, Okta, SailPoint, or Aviant alone won't handle them all. These tools focus on general identity management, and for comprehensive privileged access management, we need a dedicated privileged identity manager or privileged access manager alongside them.
Due to the partner's lack of experience with the solution, we received no training or post-implementation support. This highlights a challenge faced by organizations in Denmark, a small country with limited options, particularly in the area of identity access management.
Our One Identity Manager partner hasn't provided the value we expected. While choosing them may have been limited due to licensing restrictions, the consultants they sent weren't helpful enough. It seems our experience might have been better with a different product or a more capable partner for the specific solution we implemented.
Our company has a workforce of approximately 5,000 employees and utilizes roughly 1,000 applications, though not all are fully onboarded. This number is respectable considering the size of our country.
When choosing an identity access management solution, there's no one-size-fits-all answer. It's crucial to understand your specific needs first. Consider factors like your current IAM maturity e.g., do you need privileged access management yet?, scalability requirements, deployment options cloud vs. on-premise, and partner support. Don't be swayed by what others use; focus on what works for your business and regulations. One Identity Manager can be a good option for mid-to-large companies lacking internal IAM expertise, though it may have fewer partner integrators compared to competitors like SailPoint. However, it can be a more cost-effective choice.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.