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

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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) (14th), Web Access Management (1st), Access Management (16th)
 

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."
"You definitely need to consider CA SSO; it is quite solid, it's never really gone down, and it's a well-understood and reliable piece of our enterprise."
"SAML is the best thing we're using right now because there is no need for creating an external account."
"It has improved our user experience quite a bit because they can log in once and go to any application they want, as long as it is integrated with SiteMinder, which was not the case before."
"Once we have our authentication and authorization policies set, they are easy to duplicate across all our applications instead of trying to develop them into each application individually."
"This is the only access management product that I have come across which configures end-to-end and hosts resources."
"It is pretty easy to learn."
"It has performed very well, it does what we need it to do, it's reliable, and it doesn't impose any overhead on the user or on the platform."
"SSO has impacted security on the whole and has provided a very good user experience."
 

Cons

"It would be better if the administration and configurations were more straightforward. The architectural level is also quite complex."
"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."
"The maintenance cost has increased significantly, and we are concerned about this."
"I would prefer to see their SAML integration be a more streamlined and easier interface, more like PingFederate's interface."
"Sometimes technical support is slow to respond, and that’s typical."
"It may be a good product, but I'd advise staying away from customizing it."
"When the client approaches CA, it provides an answer that is more product-oriented, rather than solution-oriented, so there is a communication gap."
"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."
"It's difficult to configure, and has a very old and challenging user interface."
 

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."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"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."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"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
15%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.