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IBM Tivoli Federated Identity 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 Federated Identi...
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
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

AN
Presales Consultant at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
A stable and scalable web security and identity management solution.
The solution is good, but it's pretty complex. So, I wouldn't recommend this solution to anyone without extensive security knowledge. The administration and configuration aren't straightforward. If the implementation takes up to six months, it will be costly. On a scale from one to ten, I would give IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager an eight.
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

"IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager is a good solution. It's both stable and scalable."
"The feature that I mostly valued is the ease of installation on different systems, especially on Windows."
"The valuable features are security in general and ease of use, more specifically ease of use for the developers, and security where the developer doesn't have to know about authentication or security."
"All of our applications get a point, click, and you are in, while we increase security at the same time."
"For us, it’s the best-of-breed pick on the market today."
"Right now, federation that comes out-of-the-box with single sign-on is the most valuable feature that we have, and also scalability."
"A valuable feature of Siteminder is the way it handles bulk traffic. The features it has, in terms of routing the traffic and load balancing, are good."
"Siteminder allows us to manage identity and portability control efficiently."
"Obviously, the most valuable feature is the flexibility of the solution, it being able to be integrated with a number of applications and solutions, and also the configurability of the solution."
 

Cons

"It would be better if the administration and configurations were more straightforward. The architectural level is also quite complex."
"I would like to see a move towards the newer technologies, which is what we are doing right now."
"The technical support team is not very proactive."
"Once you get past the first level, it’s good support. Typically once you’ve supported the CA product for a couple of years, you probably know more than first-level support, so it’s frustrating to explain to them the issue."
"The policy store configuration, and tuning the policy store is a bit complex in ensuring it does not corrupt."
"I would prefer to see their SAML integration be a more streamlined and easier interface."
"They need to make configurations easier, and not have the engineer having to guess what will happen when he changes a particular setting."
"The installation process was complex. There are a lot of different moving pieces, and the main complaint is that it's hard to automate any of it."
"We would like the OAuth to be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our customers pay for the license every year or every three years. It's not available on a monthly basis."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"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."
"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."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"The pricing is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
24%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

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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 Federated Identity Manager
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

EXA Corporation
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText Access Manager with Managed Services vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
895,399 professionals have used our research since 2012.