Identity In Hybrid Cloud

  • Article

IT is facing increased challenges in today’s world to keep up with users’ demands and keeping users productive, while also ensuring that they are safeguarding information and users’ identity. Proliferation of modern devices with various form factors, and users’ need to access cloud-based or on-premises applications from anywhere, means that identity plays a crucial role for enabling IT to provide services. Whether your organization is just beginning the journey to adopting cloud services (IaaS and PaaS), or has already adopted a cloud-based services (SaaS) model, one thing that is common to all organizations is the need for solid and robust identity management.

In this paper we have taken a holistic view of identity management, comparing and contrasting various on-premises and cloud-based identity management components to deliver “Identity-as-a-Service”. In a diverse world of identity management we have also taken a look at how to converge on-premises identity management with cloud-based services and “connect” identities for a hybrid world.

This paper aims to give an IT architect a view of the possibilities and choices needed to design a system of identity and access management (IAM) for a hybrid cloud infrastructure, using an all-Microsoft or a heterogeneous stack. The three main topics are: 1) Scenarios to consider when extending a traditional, on-premises identity to the cloud and beyond. 2) A comparison of on-premises, cloud, and hybrid cloud practices and technologies. 3) Self-service capabilities for identity management, self-governance, and access management.

A common question imposed on IT nowadays is "To build" or "To Use" and the aim of this paper is to help you articulate an answer based on your organization’s needs for identity management. I hope IT architects find this paper useful when defining strategy for your organization that is suitable for single sign-on and application access for traditional (PC based) devices and heterogeneous modern devices (tablet, phone, and various other form-factors).

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Thanks,

Uday