When it comes to identity security, many organizations are currently facing a tough decision:
Do we keep our existing identity security solution or move to something new?
For most people, it’s easier to make these types of decisions because they can remove sentimentality from the equation. And for them, business decisions are driven by usefulness, usability, and cost/return on investment.
It is important to consider that organizations using legacy, on-premises identity security solutions are faced with a number of challenges that are driving the need to modernize:
- Complex technology stacks
- Heavy customization requiring deep technical skills
- Complicated upgrades
- Series of point products to close gaps
On top of this, most legacy providers, if they haven’t already, are sunsetting their platforms over the next few years. Users of these solutions still face existing challenges, but now in a landscape with little to no innovation and reduced support services, the result is even higher costs. And as legacy solutions age, their hidden costs become more visible.
The time may be right to modernize your identity security program with a cloud-architected solution, if you’re challenged with any of the following issues:
- Overreliance on complicated manual processes
- Updates and upgrades require extensive coding or consulting services
- Failed audits and reporting gaps
- Expensive operational and support costs
The Legacy Vendor’s Path for Modernization
While some legacy providers are moving their solutions to the cloud, their challenges often remain. This is mostly due to the fact that many of these solutions were built through acquisitions and contain disparate software components.
Building a solution in this manner can result in ongoing management challenges regardless of how they are delivered. Upgrades can also still rely on heavy customization and coding needs, along with substantial costs for ongoing professional services. Each component can also still have differing upgrade schedules that could negatively impact performance of other parts of one’s identity security program.
Legacy providers still primarily view the world with a single application provider lens where they’re the only critical application, while most organizations rely on multiple enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and other applications to drive modern business demands. Their solutions may only support the software they provide, with limited integrations to non-vendor provider critical applications. They don’t integrate with other security technologies to support robust reporting. And they still rely on disparate solutions that aren’t integrated, are built on separate code bases, and can’t efficiently or effectively communicate enterprise risk.
So while you may save costs by no longer having to maintain on-premises technologies, other challenges remain, often negating any perceived benefits.
Defining Converged Identity Platforms – Modern Identity Security for Modern Times
The ideal situation for any solution would be to have all capabilities provided through a single platform, not built through disintegrated solutions. Doing so would simplify management, increase productivity, and reduce implementation and operational costs.
Thankfully, that is a reality with converged identity platforms.
These modern solutions don’t just shift on-premises and disparate components to the cloud. They are specifically architected as a single solution that delivers historically separate identity security capabilities.
Gone are the days when administrators had to learn different tools and have deep technical coding skills to try and manage the ever-increasing numbers of identities and security threats. Comprehensive capabilities with functionality that is feature-rich and enterprise-ready means organizations no longer have to continuously buy point products to plug gaps in their programs.
Converged platforms are also better positioned to tap into identity security intelligence. Historically, administrators have had to pull information from multiple systems, normalize it (often through manual processes), and then create reports to assess their security posture and deliver accurate reports to internal and external auditors. With all information residing in a single repository, intelligence and reporting can be better utilized throughout one’s identity program.
The Identity Cloud from Saviynt is the industry leader in providing cloud-based identity security capabilities on a converged platform for organizations looking to move off of legacy, on-premises solutions.
