IAM Systems Integrators North America: Insights Into the Current Market

Hello, everyone. My name is Nitish Deshpande. I'm a research analyst at KuppingerCole Analysts. And welcome to today's KuppingerCole webinar on IAM system integrators North America insights into the current market. We recently released a report on the IAM system integrators in North America. And so this webinar takes some of the key findings from that report. Before we begin, here are some housekeeping rules. So you all are centrally muted. We are controlling the audio from here. So you don't need to mute or unmute yourself. We like to keep these webinars interactive.

So we will run a couple of polls during this webinar. I would like to encourage and request all the attendees to take part in these polls and provide your answers. We will discuss the answers during the final part of the webinar, which is also the Q&A session. If you have any questions during the webinar, you can enter those questions using the C vent control panel. And finally, we are recording this webinar. So the slide tag and the recording will be made available for download in the coming days.

Agenda for today's webinar is we'll first take a look at the overview of the IAM system integrators market in North America. Then we will take a look at what was the evaluation criteria for evaluating all the vendors in the latest Kupinger Coal IAM system integrators report. Then we will take a look at what was the methodology that was used and the categories which are used for rating the vendors. And finally, we will show you a glimpse of some of the results from that report.

So stay tuned until the end if you want to see who are the leaders, who are the followers, and who are the challengers in this report. I would like to begin this webinar with a poll question immediately, a simple question, which is the most critical IAM technology in your organization?

Is it A, IGA? Is it B, PAM?

Is it C, CIAM? Or is it D, others like access management or something else? So you can enter your answers using the C vent control panel. And we'll take a look at that at the end of the session. IAM system integrators. So system integrators are companies that provide support in consulting, implementing, and managing services for operations of IAM technologies for organizations. These IAM system integrators, they play a key role in unifying various aspects of the IT infrastructure of an organization.

They also provide a seamless framework for all the IAM technologies to operate within an organization. Along with helping with the digital transformation, IAM system integrators also support in scaling the operations of organizations. In this particular report, which we have done, we have noticed that the market for IAM system integrators is mature and can support most of the IAM technologies very effectively. These system integrators also have robust capabilities to ensure compliance with all required regulatory standards.

Also, the system integrators have their own defined matrices, which can be referred by organizations to identify the missing gaps and requirements, and then go ahead with their preferred solution. Also, we have noticed the system integrators are providing an end-to-end support, as shown in this figure on the right side. But they can also provide you individual support for each of these modules, or come in and take over a failed implementation project and fulfill that delivery.

In North America, the vendors are mainly focused on USA, but there are a few specialists from Canada, which are focused on the Canadian market. Also, in this report, there are two types of vendors, which we have seen.

So first, you have the boutique firms, specialized firms. And then you have the established big firms, the established players have vast resources, and they tend to leverage this global footprint they have for delivering the projects in North America. These vendors also support all known service offerings and IM technologies, along with having a very strong and vast network of partnership with the leading technology vendors. These firms, they're also investing a lot. That's also something we take into consideration in one of our evaluation.

They're investing heavily in AI, cloud services, and their future market trends. They can also accommodate a large number of engagements and requests due to having a higher number of workforce. So these big firms can truly help you, help your organization to transform into your required solution. But sometimes these large firms also come with their own set of challenges. These large firms often have a one-size-fits-all approach tailored to enterprises in specific verticals. Sometimes this may not align with organizations looking for a more specialized approach.

Another factor which could be challenging for companies who have a tighter budget is the pricing proposal of big firms can be much higher than, let's say, a specialized boutique firm. And this comes due to the tendency of the big firms to overstock projects. And this is a statement which we don't take lightly, but we have also verified with industry experts. And also the big firms sometimes have higher pricing proposal due to having multiple management levels in the product scope. Then you have the boutique firms, on the other hand, in North America who are focused on specialized offerings.

They have limited resources, but that also makes them agile. These firms can be very quick off the line to understand your requirements. And provide you with the initial support. Most of these boutique firms are, you can say, collaboration venture between experienced professional who previously held major positions in the big four or the other top firms. These small firms also employ only specialists who provide a proactive culture and create a collaborative environment for the clients.

Due to this specialized approach, boutique firms can provide a much better value for money compared to the big firms. But these small firms also then have their own challenges which cannot be ignored, is taking on complex and a vast number of engagements can be a challenge due to having lower number of specialists available. These firms also do not have additional talent available on the bench like big firms to address any new immediate additions to the project scope.

They also have limitations when it comes to providing professional support, 24-7 support, which the big firms do not face due to having their workforce in multiple time zones over the world. But in this report, we have seen some specialized vendors in North America who are, even though having limited capabilities in terms of resources, they are managing millions of identities and they are doing it successfully. Now we'll take a look at some of the capabilities of the IAM system integrators which we at Kubera Coldfield are important.

Of course, the first is what kind of IAM technologies and services the IAM system integrators can support. Next is the engagements, though we will discuss a bit more in detail about the engagements in the coming slide about what types of engagements are the system integrators supporting and their methods as well. Then comes the professional services support of the system integrators, and that involves ongoing maintenance or making modifications of the implementation or just providing managed services.

Reporting and dashboarding is another important capability of system integrators, which is important for auditing purposes. All the system integrators also in this report have shown varied types of project management methodologies, and they're unique in their own way. And they're working as well for them because they have a niche market sometimes and the requirements of that market define a certain type of project methodology. Automation and third-party integration are also supported by system integrators along with scalability and support for legacy and SaaS solutions.

Activities supported by system integrators include helping organizations with digital transformation, supporting organizations to identify the missing gaps in their existing solution, and helping them to move to modern solutions. They also gather all kinds of requirements about the solution and can customize the solution based on the requirements and deploy the solution. Types of engagement supported includes something basic like advisory services, consulting to more advanced implementation, deployment, coding, customization, and managed services.

There's also different types of engagement durations which are supported by the system integrators. And that can range from short-term engagements to long-term engagements to recurring engagements and yearly engagements. These system integrators are also experienced in configuring and enforcing policies for authorization, for GDPR, for ITDR, GRC.

I'm sorry, I meant to say GRC, then ITDR, and data access governance. These system integrators can also support in all types of report banking. So they can support reports of all types of formats and types, as well as reports for major compliance frameworks like FERPA, FISMA, HIPAA, CCPA, and others. Training and certification of their IAM workforce is also provided by the system integrators to stay on top of the game and be certified with the latest IAM products and vendors.

Now we'll take a look at what was the evaluation criteria that was taken into consideration by Kuping Ergol while doing this North America report. So that is divided into now seven categories. And that includes resource management as the first. We took a look at how the system integrator is managing the resources. That includes proactively certifying their IAM workforce and other capabilities, such as ability of the IAM workforce to perform tasks outside of the defined roles.

Engagements look at capabilities of system integrators around not just the number of engagements and types of engagements, but also establishing relationships with customers over a period of time. And the other thing which was taken into consideration for the number of engagements was how many engagements is the vendor doing, has done in the last three years, and in which industry verticals they are supporting. Project management, IAM projects are sometimes complex. Most of them, they are complex. So they tend to need extensive management to help customers in the transformation journey.

This category reflects the number of project managers each vendor has. Are these project managers certified?

Also, what is the project methodology? IAM technology includes all the major IAM technologies, such as IGA, WAM, access management, CM, but also other types of IAM technologies that were taken into consideration, such as verified credentials, decentralized identities, and others. API is an integration category. This category considers the experience and capabilities of system integrators to provide support for several types of third-party integrations with customer solutions, as well as the ability of the IAM professionals of the system integrators to code APIs. Auditing and reporting.

And system integrators also provide services such as auditing and forensic capabilities for security incident analysis. They also provide reports for major compliance frameworks for auditing purposes. So we took into account which compliance frameworks they are supporting and what kinds of reports they are also supporting.

Also, do the support in dashboarding and other categories like that. And finally, we have the professional services support, where we took into account how the system integrator is supporting the customer after the implementation process. And other advanced services, such as authentication methods supported by the system integrators, and their ability to create and maintain policies around authentication, and as previously mentioned, other types of policies.

Next, we have the overview of the leadership compost process of Kubernetes Code. In this process, it's a four-step process. We start with first research.

In this, we identify the vendors, create the vendor list. Then we reach out to these vendors and conduct briefings, as well as demonstrations if it's a product. And then we also send out technical questionnaires to these vendors, which gives us much more information also. And then we take all this information and go to the next step, which is the analysis part.

In this, we create the analysis, as well as write the draft of the report. Once the draft is ready, we then send it to fact-check to the vendors, where they can review the report, just their part. So we just send the vendors their part of the report, and provide if there are any updates, sometimes between the research and fact-check. Depending on the number of vendors that are in the report, the revision can be a few months, two or three months. In that time frame, vendors have innovated some new features, which they want to highlight.

Or they have added some of the limitations, which were visible during the research phase. And finally, once all the checks are approved, then the report goes for publication on the Coping.org website. For the evaluation, we have nine different categories where we evaluate the vendors. Five of those categories mentioned here are dealing with the product features or service features, if you take into consideration the system integrator report. And that includes security, functionality, service delivery, integrations, and serviceability.

In security, we look at how does the service meet the security requirements of the current standards. Is there a secure and consistent process? And what kind of certifications they have? Functionality deals with what kind of services are included by the vendor. And that can range from installation, configuration, customization, and support after deployment. Service delivery, it's a measure of the number and complexity of the services and products deployed.

Integrations, this category evaluates the ability to support relevant standards and deliver solutions that integrate with customers' application and their infrastructure, as well as any other third-party solutions. Finally, we have serviceability, which takes into account the quality of services that are rendered by the customers. So we also reached out to the customers of these vendors and conducted a survey with them on how was their experience with this vendor. And that gives us a different perspective, which can help us in giving a more accurate rating. Then we have four more categories.

These categories are not specific to the service or the product the vendor is providing, but more focused around the company. And that is innovation, market position, ecosystem, and financial strength. In innovation, we look at if the vendor is delivering any new cutting-edge products, services, or if the vendor is playing catch-up to the leaders in the segment.

The market position category deals with how many customers the vendor has, in which industries the vendor are these customers, and what regions of the world the customers are based in, as well as we also look at what is the size of these customers. So is the vendor focused on small businesses, medium businesses, or enterprise businesses? And then we have the ecosystem, where we look at the spread of partners of the vendor. And that defines the ecosystem category. And finally, we have the financial strength. So this takes into account figures around the revenue. Is the company profitable?

What part of the current product or service, how much is it contributing to the company's revenue? And is the company publicly listed or a startup? So various other fields come into play when defining this financial strength. When you combine all these nine categories for the evaluation, we then move towards finalizing the report and combining those nine categories into these four main sections. So the first one is service leadership. In this one, we take into account purely the product or the service of the service offering of the vendor, the completeness of the resources as well.

Next is the market leadership, where all the information around the company's financial strength and market position defines their ranking in this rating. Then we have the innovation leadership. And this section looks into what kind of new features the vendors are bringing, as well as at what rate they are bringing, and if they are able to manage the customer's expectations.

And once you combine these three leaderships, service leadership, market leadership, innovation leadership, then you get the final overall leadership picture, which we will, in the next few slides, I'll go and show you how an overall leadership looks like. And that gives the overall picture of the vendors in that market. Before we go to the results of the latest system integrators of the Merkle report, one more poll question for everyone. Which factor is the most important for your organization when selecting an IAM systems integrator?

Is it A, the breadth of IAM solutions offered by systems integrators? Or is it B, end-to-end project support, including maintenance?

Is it C, scalability support? Or is it D, support for integration to existing systems? You can enter your votes in the control panel, and we will take a look at that in a few minutes time. Before that, I would like to present some of the results from our leadership composed IAM system integrators North America. In this report, we have 13 vendors that were evaluated. So these 13 vendors went through the process of research, briefings, analysis, fact check. And we also have a few vendors listed in the vendors to watch section, which we think could be potential for the next report.

Or they have certain capabilities which could be considered based on your requirements. So as you can see, if you look at the list of these vendors, it's a mix of established big firms as well as some boutique specialized firms. And then you have this picture which you get at the end of all the evaluation is the overall leadership diagram. The overall leadership diagram is divided into three parts. On the right side, in the right, you have the overall leaders. So these vendors have most of the capabilities or have full capabilities that are expected from this market.

In the middle, you have the challenger section. In this section, the vendors are lacking some of the features that are required. But they are showing good track record of innovation and bringing the new features to match up to the overall leaders. And finally, you have the follower section. The vendors in this report in the follower section, which I think again, cements the initial statement I did is that the system integrators market in North America is mature and everyone is supporting most of the IAM technologies effectively.

Now, majority of the vendors in this report also support advanced services like upgrading to authentication methods to passwordless access, implementing risk-based measures, and also adding all sorts of report and dashboarding for security compliance. Several vendors in this report are focused on supporting clients in the USA with a few exceptions from Canada who are focused mainly on the Canadian market. Most of the vendors also in this report have achieved innovation maturity due to limitation of the requirement of the customer of the market.

Most of the vendors also have a considerable number of IAM professionals certified in major product vendors. That's how the overall picture of the system integrator market looks like. We also did a similar report last year on the European systems integrators. It is available on the Coupang.org website. This was the first time we have done a system integrators report. So I would like to encourage everyone to go and read that report and let us know. We will be creating a new report again soon. So I think for now, we can move to checking the result of the poll.

So we'll have to wait a few seconds once the poll results are available on the screen. So the most critical IAM technology in the organization, it's equal split between IGA and BAM with CIM coming at third and then the others. And we can take a look at the second poll result. Which factor is the most important for your organization when selecting an IAM systems integrators? And a big majority, the answer that everyone has gone for is support for integration to existing systems.

Thank you, everyone, for your votes. We can have a few minutes. We have just one minute for Q&A. So the question is here, can you share where can we find the report for European IAM system integrators? We have this report on the Tuping and Coal website. You can go on the website and see the report. It was published in December of last year. That report almost followed the same principle that we followed for the North America report, but we focused only on the vendors who are supporting clients in European region. And we are right towards the end of time.

So I would like to thank everyone for your time and look forward to seeing you in the next webinar. Thank you.