5 Thoughts on How Identity Management Can Accelerate Digital Transformation

Enterprises are increasingly turning to digital transformation to make employees more productive and deliver new experiences to customers, however applying legacy technology for these use cases often takes too long. According to our most recent research with IDG, this balancing act can be difficult to scale.

In the study, we asked IT leaders to identify key issues relating to their efforts to enable digital transformation. The respondents rated the areas they see as most important to their companies’ efforts and the challenges they face when implementing identity and access management (IAM).

Here’s the top five insights we found in our research:

1. Identity management and Identity as a Service (IDaaS) have become a priority. We found that these services matter most to enterprises that want to decrease the amount of time they spend deploying and managing cybersecurity systems. Because cloud-based applications are on the rise, security needs to shift from concentrating on the enterprise perimeter to protecting the data contained in applications outside of the company network. Users' access to these apps and their data need to be centrally managed for both efficiency and security--something that IAM and single sign-on help address.

2. IDaaS adoption continues its upward growth. Fifty-seven percent of respondents reported they had already deployed IDaaS for both single sign-on and employee portals and more than one-third also use IDaaS for mobility management and multi-factor authentication. This level of adoption indicates a high rate of success as those companies concentrate on enhancing the interaction of their employees and customers.

3. Despite its growing prevalence, enterprise digital transformation is not without barriers. Although businesses recognize the necessity of identity management in deploying digital changes, respondents also saw challenges to achieving widescale transformation. Three-fourths of respondents identified security concerns, the reliability and ease of legacy infrastructure, and high app availability as top barriers to digital transformation.

4. IT leaders tend to prioritize the customer experience over rapid digital transformation. When addressing digital transformation, more than 75% of respondents said that introducing new customer experiences was either critical or a very important priority. But, only 24% indicated they had actually implemented these new experiences. The lower level of implementation for customer products indicates the complexity and higher risks involved with projects that involve customers.Customer-facing projects often drive our enterprise customers to take action around transformation, and modernizing identity management systems. However, companies are less likely to risk inconveniencing customers if their IAM efforts create headaches. That’s because issues are more likely to surface as customers connect with a diverse collection of cloud-based services that are not directly controlled by the enterprise.

5. To meet digital transformation objectives, businesses are partnering with IDaaS providers. Many enterprises are enlisting the help of a reliable partner with dedicated expertise in identity management through IDaaS. Once this relationship is established, we found that more than one-third of IT leaders have migrated a core business system to the cloud and another third have improved employee application access. Identity management partners support the digital transformation by allowing IT leaders the flexibility to focus on application deployment and digital business goals.

   For more insights, check out our whole report or tune in to our webinar recapping the findings.