IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager [EOL] vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

IBM and Broadcom are both solutions in the Web Access Management category. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

IBM Tivoli Federated Identi...

Read 1 IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager [EOL] review

100% willing to recommend

Symantec Siteminder

Read 75 Symantec Siteminder reviews

2,692 Views
188 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

IBM Tivoli Federated Identi...

Symantec Siteminder

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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Symantec Siteminder

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Single Sign-On (SSO) (13th), Web Access Management (1st), Access Management (13th)

Featured Reviews

reviewer287652

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.

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Muzi Lubisi

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.

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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."

"It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate."

"If you need the ability for just logging without buying an application and want good security, it’s an awesome solution."

"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."

"Extraordinary product; extraordinary flexibility to explore and meet the requirements of the customer."

"SAML is the best thing we're using right now because there is no need for creating an external account."

"It's definitely a good product and you won't go wrong if you choose this product."

"SSO has impacted security on the whole and has provided a very good user experience."

"It helps protect our applications and provides identity management."

More Symantec Siteminder pros

Cons

"It would be better if the administration and configurations were more straightforward. The architectural level is also quite complex."

"There are certain integration points that can be leveraged and made more easy to deploy, like the REST APIs and things like that."

"I would like to see a move towards the newer technologies, which is what we are doing right now. I think that's in the roadmap that's coming, in the 12.8 and 14 releases, but we would like to have it sooner than later."

"An area Siteminder could improve on is that there are a few limitations, in terms of new protocols for OpenID."

"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."

"All of the feedback within our team for CA Support is not good. It really is on a very low level, but then it is very specific for CA SSO."

"I think they need to integrate some of the newer types of authentication into the product. I'm not seeing the innovation when it comes to biometrics in the product."

"The initial setup was complex, painful. But that is to be expected of any new setup. When you're a big bank like us, any kind of migration to a new product is hard. I expect it to be painful, and it was painful. But it's not something that you can avoid."

"We're currently unable to find information about if the solution can do a full implementation with SQL."

More Symantec Siteminder cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our customers pay for the license every year or every three years. It's not available on a monthly basis."

"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"The solution's pricing is competitive."

"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."

"The licensing is fair for this solution."

"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."

"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

25%

Marketing Services Firm

Insurance Company

Performing Arts

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	69

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Symantec Siteminder?

It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Siteminder?

My experience with pricing is that it is all good.

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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 ...

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Comparisons

No data available

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Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

No data available

Buyer's Guide

Symantec Siteminder

March 2026

Download Symantec Siteminder product report

Also Known As

Tivoli Federated Identity Manager

SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder

Overview

IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager provides web and federated single sign-on (SSO) to users across multiple applications. It uses federated SSO for security-rich information sharing for private, public and hybrid cloud deployments. With it you can enable security-rich business collaboration in the cloud.

IBM

Symantec® SiteMinder is designed to secure the modern enterprise through a unified access management platform that applies the appropriate authentication mechanism to positively identify users; provides single sign-on and identity federation for seamless access to any application; enforces granular security policies to stop unauthorized access to sensitive resources; and monitors and manages the entire user session to prevent session hijacking. Finally, Symantec SiteMinder is battle-tested and has been deployed in the largest IT environments in the world.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

EXA Corporation

British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo

See our list of best Web Access Management vendors.

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