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OpenText Identity Manager vs Symantec Identity Governance and Administration comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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

OpenText Identity Manager
Ranking in User Provisioning Software
9th
Ranking in Identity Management (IM)
15th
Ranking in Identity Governance Administration (IGA)
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Symantec Identity Governanc...
Ranking in User Provisioning Software
8th
Ranking in Identity Management (IM)
17th
Ranking in Identity Governance Administration (IGA)
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Identity Governance Administration (IGA) category, the mindshare of OpenText Identity Manager is 4.1%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Identity Governance and Administration is 5.6%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Identity Governance Administration (IGA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
OpenText Identity Manager4.1%
Symantec Identity Governance and Administration5.6%
Other90.3%
Identity Governance Administration (IGA)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2401464 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Updates systems quickly and does not have a limit on the number of users
NetIQ does not have a limit on the number of users. The tool is secure by nature. It can have more than one billion users. Event-based systems know what has to be changed. SQL-based systems can only change using time and date. Event-based systems provide immediate results, while SQL-based systems need time to sync. It is totally different from a security perspective. Event-based systems can update all the systems in seconds or minutes. Other systems do it within 24 hours. The basic event-based system is AI-driven. It has some kind of robotics and programming. Other tools need programming. I like systems that have prebuilt ideas of security. NetIQ has been in the market for a long period. It has all the systems and connectors. There is not much coding. We just need to configure the products. We need not do any programming. I haven't seen any other product that needs only configuration to do the job. Most products in the market are SQL-based. They need programming. Some service providers who sell other products to customers do not sell NetIQ because they can make more money by selling solutions that need more consultancy and programming. More hours lead to more money.
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

"The identity vault, password syncing and self service Password Reset are valuable features, and NetIQ does a good job with password syncing among directories."
"The most valuable feature of this solution has been the ability for us to integrate a lot of external systems, and the automatic transfer of a lot of identity information. Additionally, the customization is very good."
"The greater strength was to keep the identities synchronized without failures in both attributes and passwords."
"I would recommend this product, its quite flexible and quick to start with."
"To my knowledge it is the only event based IDM system."
"The main value lies in the simplicity of implementation, as well as its customized look and feel."
"The most valuable features are Password Reset Alerts, Password Sync, and SQL connectors."
"The stability of the NetIQ Identity Manager is good."
"This solution was implemented for a Financial Client to automate account provisioning across various disparate systems (more than 80 systems across 5 countries)."
"Compliance improvements."
"The big benefit is that the end users have an easier process requesting security access."
"Plain and simple, IDM provides the automation that allows the IT and respective business department(s) to focus in on other pressing needs while IDM standardizes the identity practice."
"In the processes where we need to analyze data, IG has enabled and facilitated the analysis of privileges, generation of roles to cover RBAC and integrate with the solution of Identity Manager, as well as the compliance aspect by the certification of privileges “Compliance”."
"The product’s most valuable feature is flexibility. It can be customized as per the customer’s requirements."
"It's saved on administration time, and reduced the wait time for access."
"What Identity Governance does is that it allows us to see the full, big picture of all this inter-connectivity."
 

Cons

"NetIQ Identity Manager can improve the bulk account uploads, it's very slow. We work in the education sector, and every year we have approximately 20,000 accounts to create in a very short period, the NetIQ Identity Manager has a problem with this, we need to use a batch job."
"The interface is old and outdated, and the design software seems archaic."
"It needs some modern features. They should improve and modernize their management interface. It has been created over years and by different persons. You can see different applications, different management consoles for different things. There should be an integrated interface."
"The user facing interfaces are not too friendly and they are also fairly hard to configure."
"Technical support is average. When it's come to complex issues, it takes longer than expected to solve."
"Be more honest about how poorly it runs on Windows servers. It is optimized for Linux."
"Scalability becomes an issue if the vision changes from the initial implementation. Not being flexible and having to rewrite quite a bit of code for even a simple added feature makes it difficult."
"The UI for requesting and approving rights have been a little outdated, however, in the most recent version that has been addressed."
"The initial setup was very complex. The product is just basically a conglomerate of a bunch of other products that were bought and pieced together."
"We did a number of things in our deployment which made life more difficult on us."
"Integration capabilities with other solutions and formats, including JSON, could be improved."
"It should be better when doing custom connections."
"Yes, sometimes the connection with the DB is lost, and it isn't fully recovered without restarting the server."
"Because it's software on our network, there are sometimes load-balancing issues or latency delays."
"The interfaces need to be revamped. They are too antiquated."
"A better information display for the approvals within the workflow would give them more information and the ability to comment back on a request as to why they're rejecting it. We've been telling them we'd like this improvement, and we hope to see it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is a bit high and could be reduced."
"It would easily help them in getting more market and more customers if more consultants knew about their software. If they could keep it free for schools for teaching purposes, it would be good. I had to pay myself to get it and use it for training. Their competitors are giving it for free. I had to pay for it myself. They are losing market to their competitors."
"I would rate the pricing a two out of ten, with one being low price and ten being high price. It is significantly more cost-effective than the major players in the market."
"Micro Focus is flexible when it comes to price. The cost varies from customer to customer. There are no additional costs, though. Everything is included."
"You just need to be aware that the more systems you connect, the more license fees you have to pay."
"The solution is quite affordable."
"Pricing and licensing models are adequate and reasonable."
"The price is based on the number of users."
"Symantec keeps increasing the price. I rate its pricing a seven on a scale of ten."
"The price is flexible for our existing customers."
"Compared to other options, CA products are not that expensive."
"The product has a good price in competition with another product with the same solution."
"The connector is free, and bundled with the product."
"I do not recall the approximate prices or licensing models, although I do so that it was priced per user number."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
University
7%
Construction Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise45
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetIQ Identity Manager?
The pricing depends on whether we buy the solution as a service or a license. The license is expensive. If we buy it as a service for a large number of users, it is the cheapest tool we can get. Th...
What needs improvement with NetIQ Identity Manager?
The tool is used mostly in big systems to understand what is happening. There are not many technicians who know how to use the product. The vendor must provide an easier console for configuring thi...
What is your primary use case for NetIQ Identity Manager?
NetIQ Directory is the main function of the product. As far as I know, it is the only event test directory that exists. It has all the potential for event-based testing. It has rules, connectors, a...
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

Novell 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

Sheetz
Acciona, Core Blox, DBS
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText Identity Manager vs. Symantec Identity Governance and Administration and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.