IAM: Globalization & Large-Scale Enterprise

Digital transformation is pushing IT toward an as-a-service model where even Identity and Access Management (IAM) is increasingly delivered as cloud-based services. Moving IAM to the cloud reduces the integration, management, and licensing complexity that arises when workloads are split between on-premises and cloud environments. Still, hybrid IT will remain the reality for many organizations for the foreseeable future, requiring IAM services that can span cloud, federated, and legacy applications while evolving beyond employee identities to include partners, customers/consumers, and non-human identities such as IoT devices.

Many early IDaaS offerings focused narrowly on capabilities like Single Sign-On or adaptive authentication, but modern enterprises require comprehensive IAM: identity and entitlement management, authentication, authorization, and governance. For multinationals, IAM becomes harder due to distributed operations, inconsistent regional stacks and processes, multiple languages, rapid product launches, simultaneous multi-market rollouts, DevOps and IoT needs, and complex layers of local and global regulation (data protection, export regulation, critical infrastructure rules, and more). Because IAM is a common thread across regulations, companies need systems that can be strict in some regions while more relaxed in others.

A service-based IAM approach, often described as an “Identity Fabric,” emphasizes standardized global services delivered via secure APIs and loosely coupled architectures (microservices, containers) to connect everyone and everything to every service. Success depends on consistent technology, processes, and operating models, paired with localization flexibility.

Managed IAM services are presented as a pragmatic path: enabling rapid deployment, a balance of customization and standardization, improved time-to-value, and reduced operational burden. Service Layers (iC Consult) is highlighted as a provider offering globally supported managed IAM using Ping Identity and ForgeRock, dedicated customer instances, infrastructure/configuration as code, and multi-region operations including China to meet local legal requirements.

• Hybrid IT environments will need IAM support for the foreseeable future.
• IDaaS offerings have matured to include identity management, entitlement management, authentication, and authorization.
• Multinational IAM must support employees, partners, customers/consumers, and non-human entities such as IoT devices.
• IAM requirements commonly appear across regulations covering access control, authentication, onboarding, and access governance.
• Service Layers is headquartered in Germany and has offices in Switzerland, Austria, Spain, the UK, the US, and China.
• Service Layers operates IAM deployments and operations in data centers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, the UK, the US, and China.
• Service Layers uses IAM products from Ping Identity and ForgeRock for core IAM functionality.
• Global Token Processing is described as enabling users to access services in all regions while keeping user data in the user’s home region.
• Service Layers can deliver services using IaaS providers including AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
• Service Layers uses dedicated instances per customer, with no runtime components shared across multiple customers.

• “IAM is about much more than just authenticating a user.”
• “Identity Management will inevitably move to the cloud”
• “Identity is becoming one of the new, essential security perimeters”
• “Global companies are better served by global as-a-service models”
• “Consistency is key to global IAM”
• “Global IAM is well-suited to a service-based model”
• “Identity Fabric is a concept for connecting everyone to all services”
• “Service-based model addresses challenges of global IAM”
• “Digital Transformation is changing IT in businesses by driving the move towards the as-a-service model, where everything – including IAM - can be provided and consumed as a cloud-based service”
• “Success in providing an IAM service in a constantly changing IT, business and regulatory environment, particularly for multinational companies, lies in the ability to adapt quickly to new requirements.”