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

IBM Tivoli Identity Manager [EOL] vs Symantec Identity Governance and Administration 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 Identity Manager...
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Symantec Identity Governanc...
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (8th), Identity Management (IM) (17th), Identity Governance Administration (IGA) (8th)
 

Featured Reviews

it_user711912 - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at a tech services company
Ease of configuration is the most valuable feature.
The engine is getting a bit long in the tooth, the UI should be redone to be a bit more modern and flexible. The software has been running pretty much on the same UI for a long time. The self-service UI was not a good enough improvement due to the "self-only" part. Lately there's been improvement, but other vendors seem to have much slicker UIs. Users want wizard-like UIs nowadays (in my experience). They don't want to navigate endless menus and selections. The engine is still the same clump of Java it was long ago as Enrole. But now it's a notably larger collection of extensions, and IBM has it reasonably documented. When done correctly, customizations are stable, but when done incorrectly they may cause hangs in the database that are difficult to resolve. Outside of that, the Adapter Development Tool (ADT), an old and (officially) unsupported tool made and maintained by an IBMer seems to no longer be maintained. A lot of people used this tool to create customized adapters for ITIM, expanding it further than IBM ever could. Now it seems all gone.
reviewer2183661 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Has an easy initial setup process, but its technical support services need improvement
The product's technical support could be better. The integration project requires a lot of technical details, so we need to find it quickly and easily. There was a large community of knowledge in the past. We kept it together and got the results. The community that works around the particular technical issue is shrinking. It used to be a specialized community that would help with the process. These particular areas need improvement. Broadcom is still using a hybrid cloud model, with some workloads on-premises and some in the cloud. They must start with the cloud adoption and move as many workloads to the cloud as possible. The on-premises environment is becoming stable. They need to rebuild that cost and the software. The product's pre-sales, technical support, and installation could also improve.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This product is mainly used to implement secure access of web applications,"
"It is a very good product and easy to maintain accounts and easy to integrate with target system."
"Go for it as it is one the best solutions in its class for identity management."
"GUI has improved significantly from the previous version Role management has improved"
"Flexibility, interoperability and the number of adapters/connectors that come with the product are key differentiating strengths in my opinion."
"The ROI of IAM projects and platforms is to enable our employees to work on their application in a short time."
"The ability to suspend/restore user accounts across multiple products over which Tivoli controls security."
"Customer Service: 10/10 - the best."
"Compliance improvements."
"This solution was implemented for a Financial Client to automate account provisioning across various disparate systems (more than 80 systems across 5 countries)."
"It offers a nice price. It's mid-range."
"What I found most valuable in Symantec Identity Governance and Administration is its simple GUI."
"The latest version is very simple to set up and install with a lot of wizards, and it also comes with a new Virtual Appliance which can select the features and be ready to use."
"The product is easy to install, setup and configure."
"It has good endpoint support and endpoint connectivity to different versioning endpoints."
"I feel the provisioning to be done well; the model offered is very good and customizable."
 

Cons

"UI needs to be more customizable."
"It's highly dependent on the database connection, if there would be even a slight network glitch in the connection between Tivoli and, mostly DB2, databases and the system was not able to recover and re-establish the connection, it would require a complete environment restart."
"The product is complex to install, configure and maintain."
"For 5.1 version (older version) of Tivoli the user interfaces were not as user-friendly as other products on the market at that time."
"Customer Service: 5 out of 10. Technical Support: 4 out of 10."
"Personally, I'd like to see a TIM Windows version. I'd also like to see a more user-intuitive interface."
"Handling bulk requests is very difficult to configure as it creates a lot of issues."
"Little complicated - needs technical skills to setup - later version are being moved to appliances."
"We have challenges because of the customization – it's difficult to do upgrades."
"Its delegation model, while IDM has the capability to delegate, the delegation process is not intuitive or forthcoming to the clients."
"Not a ten because of the complex setup and because we had some issues applying some patches."
"Cloud integration, more flexibility, and interoperability in how components interact with each other and external components need improvement."
"At the moment, stability is so-so."
"Provisioning has a dependency on Windows.​"
"Customer Service: It's a little bit difficult to support. Technical Support: It's reasonable. The support is not the quickest to respond and does not have a mature process in terms of what logs must be gathered, and what to gather before raising a case."
"We have some stability issues. We go through waves every few months where it goes up and down a lot."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Pricing and licensing models are adequate and reasonable."
"Symantec keeps increasing the price. I rate its pricing a seven on a scale of ten."
"The product has a good price in competition with another product with the same solution."
"Compared to other options, CA products are not that expensive."
"The price is based on the number of users."
"I do not recall the approximate prices or licensing models, although I do so that it was priced per user number."
"The price is flexible for our existing customers."
"The connector is free, and bundled with the product."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which User Provisioning Software solutions are best for your needs.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise45
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Identity Governance and Administration?
The pricing has been very reasonable, but licensing costs vary based on the customer. It follows a user-based licensing model.
What needs improvement with Symantec Identity Governance and Administration?
Symantec should develop a SaaS solution for cloud environments to make the solution available in various marketplaces for easy deployment. It should also offer bundle installation instead of one by...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Identity Governance and Administration?
I am a consultant and we consult for identity and network management. We work with Symantec, which is owned by Broadcom, and also with Microsoft and Oracle. Additionally, we work with open-source s...
 

Also Known As

Tivoli Identity Manager, IBM Security Identity Manager
CA Identity Suite, Symantec IGA, Layer7 Identity Suite, CA Identity Manager (CA IDM), CA Identity Minder, CA IAM, CA Identity Manager (CA IDM), CA Identity Governance
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Whirlpool Corporation, EXA Corporation, Arla Foods, Iceland Government
Acciona, Core Blox, DBS
Find out what your peers are saying about One Identity, SailPoint, Omada and others in User Provisioning Software. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.