How Enterprise Architects Can Cut Maintenance Costs in Multi-brand Media

In any multi-brand company, enterprise architects (EAs) function like orchestra conductors overseeing the performance of each individual player, and simultaneously ensuring that every section is working together to play a unified symphony Yet these goals are particularly challenging for EAs in multi-brand media companies, where immense pressure exists to integrate and innovate across channels — and existing technology often isn’t flexible or powerful enough to meet these demands. In particular, one of the most common bottlenecks that EAs face is also one of the most critical for customer engagement: logging in.

Authentication and identity management at this stage can quickly become pain points for multi-brand companies, where maintenance dollars skyrocket, developer time is wasted, and opportunities for innovation and synergy across brands are lost.

Attempts to upgrade in-house processes, tailored to a patchwork of legacy systems, often unearth more (and more expensive) issues. However, by taking a more holistic approach, EAs have the option to create an identity management system that facilitates, rather than stymies, innovation and integration.

Maintain a Single User Identity across Brands

Many multi-brand media companies covet a login that links users across brands and facilitates the creation of a unified user profile, since it has the potential to be both a money-saver and a money-maker. Implementing Single Sign-On Authentication (SSO) can support this.

With SSO, a user only needs to log in once to an application, and avoid having to enter their credentials again when switching to another brand, platform, or device. By implementing SSO across their network of brands, Finland's Alma Media achieved major cost savings and “reduced friction across their brand portfolio.”

Unfortunately, coding SSO in-house is often a cumbersome process. If you’re working with an array of outdated, fragmented systems, it can take an enormous amount of time and effort to customize SSO across your stack. Auth0’s platform helps eliminate those headaches and allows EAs to turn on SSO in any application with the flip of a single switch.

Of course, simplicity on its own isn’t enough, and any SSO solution for a multi-brand enterprise needs to be extensible. With that in mind, Auth0 makes it easy for your in-house developers to write Rules that tailor authentication to your needs. So, for example, a media company could utilize multiple types of paywalls across brands without forcing users to log in multiple times. In addition to offering customers a simple way of navigating through their favorite content, Auth0’s SSO solution cuts maintenance costs by simplifying app integration and administration.

Keep Ahead of Ever-Evolving Identity

Just as multi-brand media companies are constantly evolving to embrace new technologies, partners, and business units, as Auth0 Principal Architect Vittorio Bertocci shares in this brief video, best practices for identity management are in a constant state of change (and can be a “wild ride”. It’s a full-time job just to keep an identity management system equipped with the tools needed to stay ahead of hackers, interface smoothly with third parties, and provide customers with the identity control they expect.

As Luis Salazar, co-founder of Giving Compass attests: “If we needed to code [identity] ourselves, we'd be at the mercy of continuous maintenance, because as the social plugins change their APIs, we need to revise our code."

Overhauling your identity management system with Auth0 frees you from the work of continuous patching. The universality of Auth0’s platform connects to any application, written in any language. Offloading authentication integrations to Auth0 means that you don’t have to worry about maintaining them in-house. This can translate to enormous financial savings by allowing your developers to work on their core product, and eliminating the need to hire more talent just for authentication and identity.

According to Mike Rogers, CTO and co-founder of SiteMinder:

“Doing what Auth0 does in-house would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, and that's just to manage the service and keep it running. To roll out additional features, that cost would rise directly in proportion to the number of features we would want to add and how many developers we would need to make it happen. Anytime Auth0 releases a feature, that's something we don't have to do ourselves.”

The savings offered by Auth0 aren’t merely anecdotal; a 2017 Forrester report estimates that customers enjoy a minimum of “20% reduction in administration time and effort due to Auth0.”

Outsource Your Regulatory Compliance

Identity management tends to be such a headache for EAs because the cost of getting it wrong is so high. A data breach can irrevocably tarnish a company’s image, and a slew of new international regulations threatens steep fines for companies that fail to comply. EAs in media have to be particularly mindful of compliance, as they often handle customers and content that span multiple nations, states, and sets of laws.

Increasingly, third-party security accreditations are the gold standard by which to judge whether an organization is handling data responsibly and legally. “Most Fortune 500 companies won’t sign deals if you don’t have the applicable certifications,” explains Adam Nunn, Auth0’s Senior Manager of Governance Risk and Compliance. However, earning and maintaining these certifications is expensive and labor-intensive. Annual costs to maintain certifications such as SOC 2, HIPAA, and ISO27001 can range from tens of thousands to millions of dollars.

By outsourcing accreditation to a trusted third-party such as Auth0, EAs can garner huge savings, not to mention peace of mind.

Auth0’s accreditations require annual re-certification to maintain, and we pass that investment on to our customers. “We're getting at least 50% ROI on the investment just for security alone," says Sung Ho Choi, Co-Founder, fuboTV.

Stop Maintaining, Start Innovating

As EAs know, “maintenance costs” aren’t as simple as a single line on a budget. Every hour of developer time spent struggling with issues like identity has hidden costs in terms of increased time-to-market, a missed chance to integrate with new technologies, and a fundamental distraction from the brand’s core product.

Conversely, partnering with a trusted third-party like Auth0 for identity management ensures that the critical issue of authentication is always updated to be as secure and compliant as possible, across all your brands. With less frustrating administration, EAs can be more effective leaders, spending less of their time and budgets on identity, and more on getting the big wins. If you’re interested in offloading this demanding work to dedicated experts, contact Auth0 to learn how you can start saving your time, energy, and budget.