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

IBM Tivoli Access Manager [EOL] vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Symantec Siteminder
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (13th), Web Access Management (1st), Access Management (12th)
 

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…
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior technical Consultant at CA Africa
Improved user experience with seamless integration and easy installation
The feature that I mostly valued is the ease of installation on different systems, especially on Windows. Additionally, it is very beneficial for deploying single sign-on sessions between different windows on a web browser, provided I am connected to the right identity provider. That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the primary function of this product allowing the administration of user/network accounts with a fair amount of ease."
"Provided more secure computing."
"TAM component integration and their SSO capabilities and transparency are the most valuable features I have found."
"It is a totally secure way of accessing clients through various application portals for more than ten EU countries, just by using single sign-on."
"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 is a single product that caters for all the business needs throughout the organization."
"It is one of the best products in the present market in the area of access management."
"Its flexibility and ease-of-use are the most valuable features."
"Technical support has gotten a lot better."
"CA Single Sign-on has helped us a lot; the user only needs to use credentials once and then they can single sign-on into other websites which are already integrated into the CA Single Sign-on product."
"The solution is easy to use for our managers."
"If you need the ability for just logging without buying an application and want good security, it’s an awesome solution."
"The features most valuable to us are its usability, the way you can customize it, and its supportability."
"It is one of the most stable products in the banking organization that I am in."
"It is a pretty complete product."
 

Cons

"This product is also available in the appliance offering which has not yet matured and has many issues."
"There is only a single step-up authentication path, but I have sometimes seen the need for several steps or a divergent path."
"Older TAM versions are not compatible for connecting to a DB."
"The initial set-up is a bit complex for a novice as the Linux version of it needs you to be somewhat good with Linux."
"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."
"Complex to install and run."
"The product has not been updated with emerging technologies over the years specifically around AJAX, REST and Mobile app integration."
"Multi-factor authentication with social integration needs to improve."
"CA has reporting at the moment. With the reporting, every particular segmented product has a reporting engine. I would like to see centralized reporting for all of them together."
"While I have some integration with a few major providers, support for more would be advantageous."
"I would prefer to see their SAML integration be a more streamlined and easier interface, more like PingFederate's interface."
"The admin UI needs to be more stable."
"The maintenance cost has increased significantly, and we are concerned about this."
"We use technical support. It's not the best feature of CA. Lots of enterprise product companies have variable support offerings. CA are not the worst, but they're not the best. They're okay."
"All the problems that we reported actually have never been resolved. We could not capture enough information for CA to be able to debug the problem."
"I've seen a lot of analytics capability being built in for a number of products. Obviously, I want to be able to use analytics on CA SSO as well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The IBM prices are, as ever, extortionate, even with a business partnership, and high levels of discounts."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"Siteminder is a little costly. You pay for licensing, and they offer packages, so if you have less users, then you have to buy different products at different prices. If you have more of a user base, then the package is different. They also include other features—for example, if you have a database and you're using Siteminder, then it's good to use a Semantic-specific database, but if you are using less, then you have to purchase the database separately. Whereas if you are going for a bigger license, then it comes within the package. It depends on which plan you are using."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Single Sign-On (SSO) solutions are best for your needs.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Construction Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

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 Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Symantec Siteminder?
Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features. Currently, multi-factor authentication is available as a separate solution, and it ...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Siteminder?
I deploy and support Symantec Siteminder ( /products/symantec-siteminder-reviews ). I have been a partner and reseller.
 

Also Known As

Tivoli Access Manager, IBM Security Access Manager
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Essex Technology Group Inc.
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Okta, One Identity and others in Single Sign-On (SSO). Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.