ADFS: A Four-Letter Word to Avoid in the Enterprise

Since its introduction with Windows Server 2008, Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0 has been Microsoft’s answer to extending enterprise identity beyond the firewall. However, building an identity management solution with the AD FS toolkit has many hidden costs. While AD FS solves some identity challenges for Microsoft’s product family, as is typical from Microsoft, many more gaps exist when attempting to integrate with cloud or mobile applications from other vendors.

You might be considering implementing AD FS in your company, or maybe you already have.

Download our whitepaper "Avoid the Hidden costs of Microsoft ADFS" to learn more.

For those of you considering it: AD FS is rarely free for enterprises. There are many hidden costs that creep up once companies decide to implement AD FS. IT departments must spend their time installing, configuring and maintaining each individual cloud application. That alone can easily cause headaches with IT.

For those of you have already implemented it: What if your company plans to scale from one application today to five, six or more in the next three years? Is your company’s IT department equipped to focus on tedious application installations instead of bigger projects?

Regardless, all the manually configured applications via AD FS require regular maintenance to ensure connectivity remains intact with corporate networks and infrastructure. In addition, there are server requirements and costs to consider and maintain.

The more you investigate @*F$ the more you might be interested in swapping it out for another four-letter word: Okta.

Okta reduces installation costs, maintenance headaches and downtime risks by maintaining the relationship with cloud applications. Corporations configure their networks with Okta once and we do the rest. We continuously manage and monitor cloud application integration to ensure your company doesn’t lose connection. In addition, Okta was developed with our customers in mind and is able to provide new updates to the product regularly with zero downtime – so your employees are always connected.

To learn more about how to minimize your AD footprint, read Okta's Retire Active Directory eBook.