Identity as a Service: Cloud-based Provisioning, Access Governance and Federation (IDaaS B2E)

The Leadership Compass examines the fast-growing Identity as a Service (IDaaS) landscape and narrows in on IDaaS B2E: cloud-delivered Identity & Access Management plus Access Governance for employees in hybrid environments, supplemented by federation and baseline cloud SSO. To reduce confusion under the broad “IDaaS” umbrella, the market is split into three segments: IDaaS SSO (primarily cloud SSO), IDaaS B2E (provisioning and governance for hybrid/on-prem plus federation), and IDaaS Digital (customer/partner-centric capabilities aligned to digital transformation, potentially including IoT and secure information sharing). While convergence is expected over time, vendors will continue to specialize, from SMB SSO to enterprise-grade hybrid and digital use cases.

The analysis distinguishes pure SaaS (multi-tenant, rapid onboarding, credit-card style) from managed services (often single-tenant). Inclusion is based on customer-relevant traits such as elasticity and pay-per-use licensing, even when services originate from traditional on-prem products delivered “SaaS-style.” Required B2E capabilities emphasize hybrid integration (especially with Microsoft Active Directory), strong provisioning for cloud and on-prem, baseline access governance (auditing, access reviews, SoD controls), outbound and inbound federation, scalable directory services with flexible schema, adaptive and standards-based authentication (including FIDO), and policy-based access management.

Leadership ratings combine Product, Innovation, and Market Leadership, and are complemented by correlation matrices (Market/Product, Product/Innovation, Innovation/Market) to reveal “Market Champions,” “Technology Leaders,” and vendors over- or under-performing relative to size and reach. The market is still emerging: only five Overall Leaders—SailPoint (leading), IBM (close behind), Microsoft, EmpowerID, and Hitachi ID Systems—while many challengers show momentum, with several expected to move upward within 12–18 months. Vendor evaluations highlight differing strengths (governance depth, workflow-led customization, directory/device management, EU data residency, mobile security) and recurring gaps (federation, access governance, multi-tenancy, connector breadth, global ecosystem).

• The IDaaS market is growing in both size and number of vendors.
• KuppingerCole defines three IDaaS market segments: IDaaS SSO, IDaaS B2E, and IDaaS Digital.
• IDaaS B2E focuses on identity provisioning and access governance for on-premise environments, complemented by federation and baseline cloud SSO.
• Many IDaaS B2E offerings are delivered as managed services rather than pure multi-tenant SaaS.
• Overall Leaders in IDaaS B2E are EmpowerID, Hitachi-ID Systems, IBM, Microsoft, and SailPoint.
• SailPoint leads the Overall Leadership rating, with IBM close behind.
• Market Leaders listed are IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SailPoint.
• Microsoft leads the Market Leadership view, followed by SailPoint, IBM, and Oracle.
• JumpCloud focuses on “directory as a service” and includes cloud-based device management for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
• iWelcome runs its service from 14 EU datacenters and maintains EU data residency.

• “Selecting a vendor of a product or service must not be only based on the comparison provided by a KuppingerCole Leadership Compass.”
• “From that perspective, two aspects are of highest relevance: Elasticity of the service and a pay-per-use license model.”
• “Mid-term, we expect to see some convergence.”
• “This is an indicator of a still emerging market.”
• “Few have comprehensive solutions yet.”
• “Directory Services for managing the users: These services must provide massive scalability.”
• “Relying just on existing on-premise directory services limits the flexibility and scalability of these services.”
• “Authentication support, allowing configuration of the authentication requirements, step-up authentication based on risk and context, etc.”
• “Vendors above the line are sort of ‘overperforming’ in the market.”
• “Innovation is what customers require for keeping up with the constant evolution and emerging requirements they are facing.”