No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

IBM Tivoli Access Manager [EOL] vs Okta Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

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

IBM Tivoli Access Manager [...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Okta Platform
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (2nd), Authentication Systems (3rd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (3rd), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (2nd), Access Management (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (1st), AI IT Support (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

it_user711612 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Reverse proxy provides central control over authentication and authorization.
It is a single product that caters for all the business needs throughout the organization. It provides a seamless integration that in turn encourages most of the applications to use the SSO features Reverse proxy is the most valuable feature as it provides central control over authentication and…
SN
Identity and Access Management Specialist at a university with 10,001+ employees
Automated lifecycle management has cut onboarding times and now drives secure, clean access
Although I am a fan of Okta Platform overall, there are areas where it could improve security outcomes and reduce admin friction. My top improvement areas include the system log and analytics upgrade, which are great for point troubleshooting, but trending and root cause analysis across large tenants still require exporting to SIEM. Verbose queries and long-range retention costs can add up. Additionally, while certificate rotations are better than most, the process is still manual for busy portfolios, especially concerning multi-SP SAML certificate rotations and app metadata drift. Two more buckets of potential improvements for Okta Platform involve user experience and security. There is the issue of push fatigue and prompt sprawl, where users receive multiple prompts across different apps and sessions. I arrived at the rating of eight because the core controls are strong and reliable, but a few operational UX and UI gaps prevent it from being rated higher. The reasons for not giving it a nine or ten include ongoing issues concerning safety and change safety, the complexity of group rules and mappings, and the lack of robustness in policy management. Additionally, there remains a need for more manual involvement than necessary, especially for large portfolios and dual certificate rotation, along with proactive SP data metadata validation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It provided a secure and robust end to end security solution."
"Before the solution was implemented it took around 2-3 weeks to get all the necessary account information for a new employee in my organization, and since implementation this now only takes a few minutes."
"Since its birth it is an unbelievable stable product."
"It is a good solution for anyone to take to their enterprise and get a buy in."
"The WebSEAL reverse proxy is great for protecting your critical systems."
"It provides good scalability and reliability, not to mention the overall availability of the service."
"I like the primary function of this product allowing the administration of user/network accounts with a fair amount of ease."
"Several SSO methods are supported out of box, federation based SSO (SAML / Oauth / OpenID etc) setup is easy, performance and scalability are very good, and the internal STS token service can be used for custom SSO tokens."
"We like the access the solution provides to our users."
"We are able to look at our ROI from this solution as an intangible benefit, as the solution requires a lot of human capital but offers us security so in our opinion we have received a high ROI as this is something that we have planned for and invested in."
"Customer service is excellent; we don't have to worry when we have an issue, they are always on top of it."
"The most valuable feature of Okta Customer Identity is its SSO because it's very easy to use and it's user-friendly. Even the admin portal of the solution is very user-friendly, and you can walk through it with ease. Okta Customer Identity is not a complicated solution, and even the workflow automation feature is very, very easy to understand."
"As an integrator, I find Okta Platform user-friendly with a good number of connectors, making it easy to integrate with applications, and it is easy for SSO implementation and MFA implementation."
"What it's done for our clients is it's reduced the number of staff they need in order to manage their campus and their partner community services."
"Okta integrates well with other solutions. Once you have integrated an application into Okta and onboarded a user, they will be onboarded for just-in-time provisioning."
"Okta Platform has positively impacted my organization by doing a lot of cleanup, simplifying operations, improving visibility, governance, and security across the board."
 

Cons

"Multi-factor authentication with social integration needs to improve."
"Installation and configuration. If you don’t know the requirements of the supporting components, it could be complicated to install and this has been improved in the later versions that are renamed to IBM Tivoli Security Access Manager."
"It was complex for us as we have multiple domains."
"Redundant Policy servers had to be manually configured using LB."
"Sometimes, there are long running support tickets (for 6-8 months) and that is unacceptable from the customer's point of view."
"The profiling element is incredibly robust, but also equally as complex, it requires an off-site course to be able to understand the context or the plethora of options available."
"What I don’t particularly like is the flow duration."
"Web Portal Manager does not implement the full set of functions found in the command line"
"This user integration with the Okta integration network could be simplified."
"Okta doesn't have a partial push. It pushes down the full profile schema for lifecycle management or provisioning."
"The major problem we face with Okta Platform is pricing because most of our clientele move away from Okta Platform because of the pricing."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The stability could be better."
"This solution would be improved by adding biometrics features."
"Therefore, if you have 10 million users, that's almost 100 million, so it is costly."
"Okta Platform is a bit expensive compared to other solutions. Okta Platform is a bit expensive, and in fact, I am using the managed services from Okta Platform; they too are a bit expensive for us, but we are using them because we are happy to go with this solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The IBM prices are, as ever, extortionate, even with a business partnership, and high levels of discounts."
"Though I don't know about the licensing model of the product, I wouldn't be surprised if Okta offers a per user license subscription model."
"The solution is not the cheapest but not the most expensive. They are in the middle rating."
"Okta's pricing is right where it needs to be and right in the middle of the market."
"The solution’s pricing needs to be reasonable. You are dealing with a lot of components and the pricing is component-based."
"Pricing might be high, but it comes down when the number of people using the product goes up."
"Workforce Identity is well-priced."
"The licensing is per user per month and includes full technical support."
"The price of Okta Workforce Identity is reasonable."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Single Sign-On (SSO) solutions are best for your needs.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
14%
Marketing Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Okta Workforce Identity?
Pricing for Okta is reasonably not that much, however, I don't have access to the commercial aspect.
What needs improvement with Okta Workforce Identity?
Currently, in Okta Workforce Identity we get the two-digit authentication code. Instead of getting the two-digit authentication code, if we had an option to do fingerprint verification, that would ...
What is your primary use case for Okta Workforce Identity?
I don't have many details about Okta Workforce Identity. I use the tool just to sign in to different applications that we have. We basically set up Okta Workforce Identity in our mobile phone. We d...
 

Also Known As

Tivoli Access Manager, IBM Security Access Manager
Okta Customer Identity, Workforce Identity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Essex Technology Group Inc.
FedEx, Zoom, Takeda, Lululemon Athletica, GrunHub, jetBlue, McKensson, Bain & Company, Engie, Peloton, Sonos, T-Mobile, Hewlett Packard, MGM Resorts, Ally Financial, Priceline, Albertsons, Itercom, Classy, FICO, Kensho, Live Nation, Drata, Rotary, and others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Okta, One Identity and others in Single Sign-On (SSO). Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.