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IBM Security Verify Access vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Omada Identity
Sponsored
Ranking in Identity Management (IM)
4th
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (4th), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (3rd)
IBM Security Verify Access
Ranking in Identity Management (IM)
21st
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (13th), Access Management (14th)
Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Identity Management (IM)
2nd
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
236
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (1st), Authentication Systems (1st), Access Management (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Pernilla Hulth - PeerSpot reviewer
The interface is easy to use and gives you a solid overview
The cloud-based deployment was straightforward, but the on-prem deployment was in a highly complex ecosystem. Omada has matured since then. I wouldn't say that it isn't straightforward, but it depends on the customer. A standard deployment is relatively easy, but it can be more painful if you need a lot of customization. We deployed the cloud solution in around four months, nearly meeting the 12-week benchmark. The on-prem deployment took three years. It was a highly complex ecosystem that was dependent on other systems. Depending on the size of your environment, you need a product owner and some specialists for maintenance. My last customer was a university with a complex environment. They had around 12 people involved in maintenance at that organization. Typically, it's between 2-5 people.
Ateeq Rehman - PeerSpot reviewer
Has improved secure user access while managing development through multiple technologies
I have already explained this in my previous call; I don't handle financial terms and commercials. Pricing is generally managed by functional teams and management looking after licensing matters. In Pakistan, vendors such as Oracle and IBM manage account relationships with clients and have tailored pricing models, so I do not have sufficient insights into that aspect.IBM Security Verify Access installation process is not straightforward; it requires underlying specialized knowledge upon which the IBM products are based. The complexity and scalability of the architecture necessitate in-depth technical knowledge and understanding of the system. Thus, installation is not as simple as clicking through; it requires extensive configuration of the underlying application servers, such as IBM WebSphere, where these products are deployed and configured.
Bahram Piri - PeerSpot reviewer
Security focus and seamless implementation increase platform productivity
Microsoft Entra ID can be improved in many ways, and there's a big wish list.If we're focusing on security, something that I definitely expect is improvement in the UI and UX for frontline workers. This is important, especially for non-tech savvy individuals. It is something Microsoft Entra ID could do to improve for a wider audience. It's important to focus on the frontline workers since they are non-tech savvy individuals. They are not like those back-office engineering C-level employees who are constantly dealing with computers, and we need to build a specific user experience and user interface for them to handle this stuff. That's something I expect Microsoft to focus on more for Microsoft Entra ID.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"You can make resources. You can import them from Azure or Active Directory and put them in an application. For example, if there is an application that uses a lot of Active Directory groups, you can make the groups available for people. If they need to access that application, you can tell them the resource groups you have for that application. People can do everything by themselves. They do not need anybody else. They can just go to the Omada portal, and they can do it all by themselves. That is terrific."
"It has a very user-friendly interface compared to what we are used to, and it is highly configurable. In the old solution, when we needed to do something, we had to have a programmer sitting next to us, whereas, in Omada Identity, everything is configurable."
"The most valuable feature of Omada is its API connectivity, which allows seamless integration with various services like SAP, GRC, and Microsoft licenses."
"The best feature in Omada Identity is that it enables us to implement standardized employee life cycle processes so that we don't have to create them ourselves. We can then use the standard workflows. The breadth and scope of the solution’s IGA features also fulfill our requirements."
"We are able to onboard new user accounts much faster by automating the process and standardizing our operations globally. Previously, there were many individual processes and manual admin interactions. We also see a lot of cost savings and benefits because through automation and standardization."
"Our customers have benefited from Omada Identity automating the certification process. Most of our customers were using manual methods for user access certification. With Omada Identity, you can automate almost all of it, which means that certification now becomes on demand. You don't have to wait for two or three months to execute a certification timeframe. Instead, you can do certifications as often as you want."
"The most valuable aspect of the product is that it is Microsoft-based and it supports all Microsoft technology."
"Surveying is a valuable feature because it allows us to import data and see who has access to what data, for example."
"IBM Security Verify Access, formerly known as ISAM, IBM Security Access Manager, now renamed to ISVA, integrates with central directory services for our organization and provides user management functionality."
"Its stability and UI are most valuable."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Security Access Manager, at least for my company, is multi-factor authentication. That's the only feature my company is using. The solution works well and has no glitches. IBM Security Access Manager is a very good solution, so my company is still using it."
"It's a good solution for identification and access management."
"IBM Security Verify Access is providing a secure way of handling the user login journey, and secure user authentication is fully managed by ISAM or ISVA."
"The solution has powerful authentification and authorization. It offers a good way to increase security."
"The tool provides a password vault, single sign-on, and multifactor authentication. It offers various authentication methods like fingerprint integration, one-time passwords, or tokens sent via email or SMS. This ensures secure access to your accounts by providing multiple authentication options."
"From the integration point of view, it supports SAML, OIDC, and OAuth. For legacy applications that don't have support for SAML and other new protocols, it provides single sign-on access to end-users. From the integration compatibility point of view, it is highly capable."
"It is pretty good in terms of stability."
"It offers features that improve our security posture such as multifactor authentication, which is the second layer of protection that is used when we log into the cloud."
"Microsoft Entra ID is regarded as the best ID management suite for integrating applications using SAML 2.0 for single sign-on."
"We have a complex scenario with several applications, and we're trying to achieve SSO for most of our applications, but some of our legacy applications don't support SSO or modern protocols. Our core applications are ready for SSO or to be federated. We've centralized our authentication process using Entra ID, so we can collect sign-offs from the users and filter using conditional access."
"The features I find most valuable are conditional access, privilege management, and dynamic groups."
"The most valuable feature is the ease with which a person can log in remotely using only a password or pin without creating a profile or policy."
"The scalability is good now, and I find it to be more stable and faster since scaling up to ESX."
"I would rate the support as ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"Omada's performance could be better because we had some latency issues. Still, it's difficult to say how much of that is due to Omada versus the resources used by our other vendors in our on-prem environment. Considering the resources we have invested into making it run well, it's slightly slower than we would expect."
"In our organization, all the data is event-driven, which means that if an attribute is changed in the source system, it can be updated within a few seconds in all end-user systems. There is room for improvement in Omada regarding that. Omada is still batch-based for some processes, so sometimes it can take an hour or even four hours before the execution is run and the update is sent."
"Omada Identity's user interface needs improvement, especially for new users."
"The biggest issue, which is the reason why we are transitioning from their product to SailPoint, is the overall user experience. From a technical perspective, it is a very good product, but from an end-user experience perspective, it significantly lacks."
"The comprehensiveness of Omada's out-of-the-box connectors for the applications we use could be better. We are getting a new HR system called Cornerstone for which they do not have an out-of-the-box connector, so we have to take the REST connector and play around with it."
"The account management integration isn't bad, but it isn't plug-and-play like Microsoft Azure. You need some deep development knowledge to set up the connectors."
"The web GUI can be improved."
"What I would most like to see added to the product is role management, especially enterprise or business role management, and the processes around that."
"The solution could be classified as a hilt system. There are a lot of resources being used and it is suitable for very large enterprises or the public sector."
"They can improve the single sign-on configuration for OIDC and OAuth. That is not very mature in this product, and they can improve it in this particular area. OIDC is a third-party integration that we do with the cloud platforms, and OAuth is an authorization mechanism for allowing a user having an account with Google or any other provider to access an application. Organizations these days are looking for just-in-time provisioning use cases, but IBM Security Access Manager is not very mature for such use cases. There are only a few applications that can be integrated, and this is where this product is lagging. However, in terms of configuration and single sign-on mechanisms, it is a great product."
"There are a lot of areas that can be improved, but the main area is the lack of customization. You cannot easily customize anything in the product. It is not easy to tweak the functionality. It is challenging to change the out-of-the-box functionality."
"What we'd like improved in IBM Security Access Manager is its onboarding process as it's complex, particularly when onboarding new applications. We need to be very, very careful during the onboarding. We have no issues with IBM Security Access Manager because the solution works fine, apart from the onboarding process and IBM's involvement in onboarding issues. If we need support related to the onboarding, we've noticed a pattern where support isn't available, or they don't have much experience, or we're not getting a response from them. We're facing the same issue with IBM Guardium. As we're just focusing on the multi-factor authentication feature of IBM Security Access Manager and we didn't explore any other features, we don't have additional features to suggest for the next release of the solution, but we're in discussion about exploring ID management and access management features, but those are just possibilities because right now, we're focused on exploring our domain."
"Configuration could be simplified for the end-user."
"The user interface needs to be simplified, it's complex and not user-friendly."
"IBM Security Verify Access installation process is not straightforward; it requires underlying specialized knowledge upon which the IBM products are based."
"IBM Security Verify Access installation process is not straightforward; it requires underlying specialized knowledge upon which the IBM products are based."
"Many people believe that the Azure Active Directory is overly complicated and antiquated."
"The only issue is the OU is not properly synced. Therefore, you have to do a manual sync sometimes or you might lose the connector due to AD Connect or sync servers."
"It would be awesome to have a feature where you can see the permissions of a user in all their Azure subscriptions. Right now, you have to select a user, then you have to select the subscription to see which permissions the user has in their selected subscriptions. Sometimes, you just want to know, "Does that user have any permissions in any subscriptions?" That would be awesome if that would be available via the portal."
"I believe it can also be integrated into other Microsoft products, as well as more integrations with other solutions."
"A couple of years ago, I experienced some difficulty in implementing the solutions, the services of Azure AD. In one instance, I was not able to configure Azure AD for a registration. This was two or three years ago. However, currently, the documentation is very clear and there are no loopholes or anything that could hinder even a simple IT administrator to implement these services."
"They should put the features of P1 and P2 into a single license."
"There are areas for improvement, particularly when moving between tenants. If we create a new tenant and try to set it up under the same organization, it becomes extremely difficult. A recent incident we dealt with took four months to resolve with a seven-day deadline, which was quite frustrating."
"There should be guidance on features, especially security features, in Entra ID and whether they are sufficient on their own. The solution could become expensive when paying extra for enhanced security features, so Microsoft needs to offer better clarity on this matter."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Omada Identity is competitively priced and delivers good value for our money."
"The pricing is okay."
"It is fairly priced for an on-premise environment, but for the cloud environment, I am not that happy with the pricing."
"It is expensive. Fortunately, I had a very good procurement manager on my side, but they are expensive. The closest competitors are also very expensive. You get a full-fledged solution that can do everything you dream of, but you pay for everything."
"There were a lot of administrator, partner, and supplier accounts for people who were no longer working for us but still in the system. So, we reduced the number of users no longer with the company, which saved us some money on licensing."
"Omada is expensive."
"Omada Identity offers a reasonable price point, but it will increase as we transition to the cloud."
"Omada Identity is very reasonably and competitively priced."
"The product is not expensive. It depends on the number of users."
"The license and costs depend on the amount range of users you have. For just approximately 2,000 users, the price is practical and fair. However, when you have 20,000 users, it starts to become really expensive, and the discount per user is not attractive enough to go ahead and purchase."
"It costs about 300K AED for a year. Its pricing is a bit on the higher end, but in comparison to other products in the market, its price is still better. There are lots of other products that are very costly."
"Pricing could always be better. You pay the premium for Microsoft. Sometimes, it is worth it, and at other times, you wish to have more licensing options, especially for smaller companies."
"It's really affordable."
"The licensing model makes it difficult to understand the real cost of the solution, especially because it changes all the time."
"The product's price is in the midrange."
"It is a really nice tool and we have a license for the more complex model."
"I'd recommend Azure Active Directory if you are a big company. For small or medium companies, it's probably not the best idea in the world because of the pricing. If you are a small company, you can probably deploy your own solutions because you're not handling a website with tons of traffic. If you are not like Adidas, Nike, or Walmart, you can do it in a way that is more localized than handling everything through a big price solution. However, Azure tends to provide you with solutions that are easier to use. If it was cheaper, I'd definitely recommend going for it."
"Azure Active Directory is more expensive than Google, but the capabilities they provide are superior."
"Pricing-wise, they offer a stepladder approach. You can start with the lowest level features, then start increasing based on new requirements."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Insurance Company
14%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise41
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise132
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Omada Identity Cloud?
As an administrator, we benefit from a lot of functionality that is available out of the box, but it is also configur...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Omada Identity Cloud?
They are positioned at a good price point. They are lower than some of their competitors.
What needs improvement with Omada Identity Cloud?
The biggest issue, which is the reason why we are transitioning from their product to SailPoint, is the overall user ...
What do you like most about IBM Security Access Manager?
The tool provides a password vault, single sign-on, and multifactor authentication. It offers various authentication ...
What needs improvement with IBM Security Access Manager?
The user interface for users and administrators could be improved to make it easier. Automating some functions could ...
How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Du...
What do you like most about Azure Active Directory?
It is very simple. The Active Directory functions are very easy for us. Its integration with anything is very easy. W...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?
Our experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Entra ID involves leveraging Microsoft 365 E...
 

Also Known As

Omada Identity Suite, Omada Identity Cloud
IBM Security Verify Access (SVA), IBM Security Access Manager, ISAM
Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bayer, ECCO Shoes, Vattenfall, NuStar Energy, Unicredit, Schiphol Group, BMW Group, Deutsche Leasing
POST Luxembourg
Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security Verify Access vs. Microsoft Entra ID and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.