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There’s a new hot market in the identity and access management (IAM) space, and it is generating a great deal of interest from a variety of players. The cloud identity management competitors span from up and coming startups to the largest tech companies in the world, and the attraction to the market is easy to see There’s no doubt that whomever owns this market will generate tremendous value.
Before we dig into some of the players in the cloud identity management market, we should step back and give some context to the IAM space.
The Origins of the IAM Market
The identity management market really kicked off when Tim Howes and his colleagues at the University of Michigan created the Lightweight Directory Authentication Protocol (LDAP). This subsequently catalyzed two major innovations: Microsoft® Active Directory® and OpenLDAP™. These two directory services would become the core of many IT organization’s IAM approach.
In fact, for many years, you could say that Active Directory was synonymous with identity management since it owned the market. But, as the IT landscape started to shift with web applications, cloud infrastructure from AWS®, Mac® and Linux® desktops and laptops, Samba file servers and NAS appliances, WiFi, and more, AD started to struggle.
The result was that vendors tried to ‘patch’ AD with new solutions like web application single sign-on. The idea was that Active Directory would remain the authoritative identity provider, and other IAM solutions would federate those identities out to non-Windows and cloud IT resources. This solution worked for a while, but web app SSO providers come with an additional cost – financially and timewise.
IT Moves to Cloud Identity Management
Then, IT admins started to realize that only a small percentage of their network was Windows® and on-prem. So, they started to search for a different approach to identity and access management. That approach turned out to be cloud identity management.
Of course, like any hot market, many IT vendors are claiming that their solution is a cloud identity management platform. But IT admins are looking for a comprehensive identity provider that is delivered from the cloud. Many of the cloud identity management competitors are partial solutions that address one specific need in the IAM space. Some focus on web application single sign-on, while others focus on creating a user management system for their own apps and services. This is not what IT organizations want though.
IT organizations want one single SaaS solution that securely manages and connects user identities to all of the IT resources they need including systems, applications, files, and networks regardless of platform, provider, protocol, and location. JumpCloud® Directory-as-a-Service® does just that.
Consider JumpCloud the Leading Cloud Identity Management Platform
JumpCloud Directory-as-a-Service is delivered from the cloud, so you no longer have to deal with the availability, security, maintenance, and configuration that comes with an on-prem identity management platform. JumpCloud also integrates with a variety of protocols like cloud LDAP, SSH, cloud RADIUS, SAML, Samba, and more. This makes it possible for IT admins to provide their users with one set of credentials that they can use to easily access their systems (Windows, Mac, and Linux), local and cloud servers (AWS, GCP), legacy and web-based applications, on-prem and virtual file storage, and wired and wireless networks.
With one solution, IT admins can finally manage user identities and their access to all of the IT resources in their environment.
Learn More
Interested in digging deeper into JumpCloud’s architecture? Consider watching the whiteboard video above. You are also invited to learn more about how JumpCloud does against cloud identity management competitors by signing up for a free account and conducting a side by side comparison. You’ll be able to test our entire set of directory services features and your first ten users are on us. If you have any questions along the way, please drop us a note, view our YouTube Tutorial playlist, or browse our Knowledge Base articles.
