OpenIAM Identity and Access Management

IAM requirements vary widely across organizations and are rapidly evolving from homegrown tools to commercial off-the-shelf software and increasingly to SaaS. At the same time, many organizations need IAM that integrates tightly with business processes and applications, driving demand for “Identity Platforms” that combine strong out-of-the-box functionality with extensive APIs for customization and integration. This demand spans both customer-facing and employee-facing use cases, including emerging scenarios like Consumer IAM and consumer IoT device management, where consistent customer experiences depend on well-managed identities, flexible authentication, and coordinated device/“thing” management. Key platform requirements include scalability, flexibility through comprehensive APIs and customization, strong standards support, and modern architectures such as microservices, offered in multiple deployment form factors (on premises, soft appliances, managed service, and cloud).

OpenIAM is positioned as a flexible, integrated IAM suite that has evolved from an open source model to a hybrid of commercial and open source components. It supports deployments across on premises, private cloud, and cloud-hosted IDaaS targeted at hybrid IT environments. The product comprises OpenIAM Identity Manager (identity provisioning, access governance, auditing, password management, delegated administration, and self-service) and OpenIAM Access Manager (federation, web access management, SOA security, advanced authentication, and SSO). It offers broad connector coverage (including SAP, databases, Active Directory, Linux/Unix, LDAP, and Microsoft cloud ecosystems), mobile-enabled access requests/approvals, RESTful integration services, and governance features like access reviews. Access Manager adds risk-based and chained authentication, social login integration, mobile OTP, and extensive standards support (SAML v2, WS-Federation, OpenID, OAuth 2.0), plus fine-grained authorization with XACML and Spring Security integration. Strengths include architecture, access management depth, deployment flexibility, and self-service; challenges include lack of a fully multi-tenant cloud service and smaller global scale.

• IAM requirements differ significantly between organizations and are undergoing massive change.
• Demand is increasing for Identity Platforms that enable customization and tight integration with business applications.
• Scalability, flexibility, and strong standards support are key requirements for Identity Platforms.
• Microservice architectures are described as the modern approach, replacing monolithic IAM software designs.
• OpenIAM consists of OpenIAM Identity Manager and OpenIAM Access Manager.
• OpenIAM Identity Manager provides identity provisioning, access governance, and auditing features.
• OpenIAM Access Manager supports SSO via password injection and federation.
• Standards support includes SAML v2, WS-Federation, OpenID, and OAuth 2.0.
• OpenIAM supports XACML for fine-grained authorization decisions.
• OpenIAM’s challenges include no fully multi-tenant cloud service and relatively limited global scale.

• “IAM is increasingly considered to be not only a turnkey solution but also a capability that needs to tightly integrate with existing and future applications.”
• “This requires both a strong set of out-of-the-box features and a comprehensive set of APIs that allow for flexible integration with other types of applications and services.”
• “Traditional Enterprise IAM is focused on efficient and complex processes in a structured environment, with little integration into other applications.”
• “There, such integration is essential to provide one consistent interface to the customer.”
• “Identity Platforms deliver the backend and the services for building new customer-facing solutions, by delivering both APIs and broad standards support.”
• “Microservice architectures are the choice of today, moving away from complex, monolithic software architectures to more flexible and expandable approaches.”
• “OpenIAM effectively delivers an integrated suite covering the major requirements of Identity and Access Management.”
• “A feature that is less frequently found is support for fine-grain authorization, including the XACML standard.”
• “The service-oriented architecture, based on micro services, makes OpenIAM a flexible offering with a high degree of scalability.”
• “We recommend considering them in evaluations, especially when organizations are looking either for comprehensive and highly integrated IAM suites or when a flexible, modern architecture which exposes the capabilities through a consistent service layer are among the key features.”