Digitization creates complexity. Your legacy systems must be depreciated, migrated, or modernized. Your data must be cleansed, consolidated, and used in new ways. Meanwhile, customers are engaging with you on new channels and input-constrained devices but expect not to have to reset their password or sacrifice a good user experience. And your partners want to keep their access to critical data in your systems without interruption.
Identity can help – but only if you approach it the right way.
Identity management is often a critical missing piece when it comes to digitizing services. The main reason is that many companies use identity as a point solution for one area of the business. Think social login for a single app or profile enrichment functionality that never reaches the ears of the marketing team.
But digital transformation isn’t an isolated project. If you want the full value of identity, all digital services need to use the same identity platform. Identity should be a strategic service in your digital infrastructure that all applications can use again and again, without having to reinvent the wheel. Your developers will thank you, and you’ll get to market faster, innovate more, be more secure, and lower your maintenance costs.
You can develop an action plan for thinking about identity from a platform perspective in a new whitepaper from KuppingerCole and Auth0 titled, “Do Identity Right – So Your Digital Business Strategy Succeeds.”
In this post, we explore some of the key concepts. You can download the full whitepaper in English here and German here.
Introducing: Identity API Platforms
Digital transformation creates fragmented systems which ultimately need to talk to each other and to customers and partners if you want your digital business to succeed. APIs, or Application Program Interfaces, are a powerful solution, and this year KuppingerCole established a new IT market segment – Identity API Platforms – for vendors in this space.
Identity API Platforms support the requirements of IAM, Federation, IDaaS, CIAM, and more with a focus on being developer-centric. They are ideal for providing identity management in agile, DevOps, and more complex IT environments. “The resulting benefits of relying on an Identity API Platform are apparent,” says Martin Kuppinger, KuppingerCole founder and author of the whitepaper. “They allow for efficient implementation and re-use of identity services across all the various digital platforms and services an organization is creating.”
Kuppinger adds: “Auth0 counts amongst the leading providers of Identity API Platforms, with a cloud-based offering that delivers extensive API support specifically around the authentication and authorization of users.”
We’re proud that Auth0 was also named an Overall Leader in KuppingerCole’s inaugural Leadership Compass for Identity API Platforms, which notes the strength of our developer tools, online support, and overall ecosystem.
Architecting for Scale
“Today’s established software paradigm is centered around creating microservices with well-distinguished capabilities,” says Kuppinger. “This not only includes services for business functions, but also the underlying capabilities such as authentication, user management, encryption, or other identity and security services.”
If you want to prepare your business for scale, avoid monolithic architectures. Instead, think in best-of-breed services that can talk to each other via APIs. Taking this approach for identity – exposing identity services as an API layer – will help you be more agile and flexible. Applications can consume these services instead of creating their own.
Auth0 as Your Strategic Identity Platform
“Auth0 is well-positioned to become the identity platform for digital applications, for any type of organization.” – Martin Kuppinger, KuppingerCole
Whether you’re in a continued state of digital transformation or a digital native focused on building your core product, you understand the importance of answering who should have access to what. A centralized, platform-based identity solution will help you make your digital business strategy a reality. Auth0 is one of the leading global providers in this space and has been recognized by KuppingerCole as a market and technology leader in CIAM, and Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) and Identity API Platforms.
Download the whitepaper to learn more about doing identity right for the digital business.
Register for the upcoming webinar with Martin Kuppinger, Founder and Principal Analyst at KuppingerCole.
About the author
McKenzie Mayer
Customer Identity Product Comms Lead at Okta