Single sign-on (SSO) solutions are a popular category within the identity and access management (IAM) sector. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With that, interest in two categories of SSO is rising above the rest: cloud-based single sign-on<\/em> and open-source single sign-on<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Up to 93% of CIOs<\/a> in the SaaS industry report that they are planning to adopt cloud SaaS. On top of that, average small and medium businesses use 102 and 137 different apps, respectively, and spending growth is outpacing the number of unique apps in use<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These stats lead to two conclusions:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The overall concept of SSO has been extremely valuable to IT admins over the years. Many single sign-on solutions have hit the market and evolved to fit in with today\u2019s modern IT environment. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before web-based applications surfaced, IT organizations were able to centralize user management solely using Microsoft Active Directory (AD). This was possible because their networks were largely Windows-based and on-prem. But IT lost some of this capability when web-based applications exploded onto the market. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Users needed to access them, but AD didn\u2019t let you connect to them with the same credentials. Due to this, security at many organizations took a hit, admins had less control over the IT ecosystem, and end-users experienced more login friction than necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because of this, a generation of web app SSO providers \u2013 often called IDaaS solutions<\/a> \u2013 emerged to fill this unwanted gap. As they gained popularity, friction emerged in terms of cost, capability, and integration, and thus, the interest in opensource single sign-on solutions developed.<\/p>\n\n\n
Unfortunately, web-app SSO doesn\u2019t lend itself well to open source. OpenLDAP<\/a>, FreeIPA, Samba, and other solutions in the IAM world are popular open source alternatives to Microsoft Active Directory<\/a> as an identity provider, but these are not web-app SSO alternatives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The challenge with SSO is that there are \u2018connectors\u2019 or plug-ins for each web application and somebody needs to write and manage those connectors. With some SSO providers<\/a> having over 10,000 of them, you can see why the open source category isn\u2019t easily solving this need. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Plus, there is another issue with the more traditional web app SSO category that needs to be considered. Web-based applications aren\u2019t the only \u201cnew\u201d, modern resource to cause trouble for Active Directory. Between the rise of Mac and Linux and cloud infrastructure, most IT admins are looking beyond the typical AD and SSO<\/a> setup altogether. <\/p>\n\n\n\n