Leveraging Identity Fabrics on Your Way Towards Cloud Based IAM

Organizations are rethinking Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Identity Governance & Administration (IGA) because traditional on‑premises enterprise identity systems no longer match the pace, complexity, and risk profile of increasingly digital businesses. Early adopters of IAM now face a paradox: their established, data-center-based platforms often cannot evolve fast enough for new digital services, yet letting each digital initiative create its own identity solution risks uncoordinated silos. Since IAM and IGA underpin business enablement, cybersecurity, and compliance across all identity types, they require new deployment models and a more consistent service orientation.

Business demand for digital transformation is pushing for a strong “digital identity backend” that can supply identity services quickly to emerging applications; organizations are less willing to wait for legacy delivery cycles. Many current IAM products remain complex, monolithic, and GUI-centric, with limited standard extensibility beyond protocols; reliance on vendor-specific interfaces and proprietary APIs makes customization expensive, error-prone, difficult to maintain, and increases vendor lock-in. Operational expense is typically substantial and rises further when expanding into new domains such as customer IAM or IoT identities. Upgrades and patching introduce downtime risks and unpredictable side effects; fear of disruption can lead to deferred patching, creating serious security exposure. Meanwhile, legal and regulatory compliance burdens grow, amplified by new identity populations and privacy requirements. A persistent skill gap compounds these issues, as operating and evolving on-prem IAM/IGA demands scarce, specialized security expertise.

The proposed direction is an Identity Fabric: a modern, service-based architecture that unifies identity services to provide controlled access for everyone (and everything) to every system. IDaaS complements this by delivering standardized IAM capabilities as cloud services, enabling faster deployment and innovation while shifting many operational tasks to the provider, with compliance and governance remaining shared responsibilities.

• Traditional enterprise IAM systems are often developed and operated in on-premises data centers.
• Many IAM solutions are complex, monolithic applications that are not easy to deploy.
• Beyond standard protocols, IAM products commonly provide vendor-specific interfaces and proprietary APIs.
• Customer-specific workflows built on proprietary interfaces tend to be complex, expensive, and difficult to maintain.
• Day-to-day operating expense for enterprise IAM/IGA is typically substantial.
• Adding functionality for customer IAM or IoT devices further increases IAM/IGA operating costs.
• Updates and patches are often accompanied by downtimes or maintenance windows.
• Fear of update side effects can lead organizations to intentionally avoid patching, increasing security risk.
• Running an enterprise IAM in-house increases demands to meet legal and regulatory compliance requirements.
• Operating and evolving on-premises IAM/IGA requires specialized IT security professionals who are scarce.

• “Traditional on-premise IAM systems face high operational demands that no longer seem appropriate for increasingly digital organizations.”
• “Businesses are increasingly not willing or able to wait for their legacy IAM to deliver the identity services they demand.”
• “They are rather complex, monolithic applications that aren’t easy to deploy and offer standard, GUI-based user interfaces.”
• “Functional enhancements and customer-specific workflows built on these are complex, expensive, difficult to maintain, prone to errors and lead to increased vendor lock-in.”
• “In order to avoid these problems, systems are therefore intentionally not patched, which poses considerable security threats.”
• “The operation and further development of an on-premises IAM/IGA system inevitably requires highly competent, specialized IT security professionals.”
• “These services aim at providing access for everyone (and everything) to every service and system, in a controlled manner.”
• “IDaaS (Identity as a Service) is a market segment of IAM characterized by delivery of traditional IAM services in an as-a-service model.”
• “Move clearly specified services strategically into the cloud.”
• “However, compliance and governance remain a shared responsibility.”