Identity Fabrics

In this Leadership Compass report, KuppingerCole analyzes solutions that form the basis for modern Identity Fabrics, a paradigm that offers integrated Identity Services enabling seamless, controlled access to various identities (employees, partners, consumers, or devices) across all services. Identity Fabrics combine several tools and services within a microservices and container-based architecture, handling core IAM areas such as identity governance and administration (IGA), access management, and privileged access management (PAM). Orchestration solutions, either as integrated suites or standalone offerings, are also becoming a central component of Identity Fabrics, enhancing the deployment and integration of legacy IAM technologies.

The report evaluates IAM offerings, focusing on their ability to support a wide range of IAM capabilities, provide comprehensive APIs, follow modern architectural patterns, and support various deployment models. It distinguishes between Overall Leaders, Product Leaders, Innovation Leaders, and Market Leaders.

Highlights include:

• The rapid evolution and innovation within the Identity Fabrics market.
• A notable trend is the deployment of orchestration solutions encompassing identity services and legacy integrations.
• The significant role Microsoft, Ping Identity, IBM, Broadcom, One Identity, Oracle, CyberArk, RSA Security, EmpowerID, and Exostar play as Overall Leaders in the IAM market segment.
• The ongoing shift of IAM towards service-oriented, microservices architectures and strong API support for flexible deployment and scalability.

The report also covers varied delivery models, including multi-tenant public cloud services, single-tenant services, and deployment as full Identity as a Service (IDaaS). It emphasizes the importance of identity lifecycle management, access governance capabilities, adaptive authentication, federation standards, the support for multiple identities including devices and services, and the need for integrating PAM and CIEM capabilities.

Recommendations for evolving a traditional IAM system into a modern Identity Fabric involve defining microservices-based target architectures, proceeding step-by-step, encapsulating existing functions, and maintaining continuous, non-disruptive operations.