The Gartner 2019 Critical Capabilities for Identity Governance and Administration

Analyst house Gartner, Inc. released its 2019 Critical Capabilities for Identity Governance and Administration report. This serves as a companion resource to their popular Magic Quadrant Report. Used in conjunction with the Magic Quadrant, the Critical Capabilities Report acts as a vital additional resource; indeed, it can assist buyers of identity governance and administration solutions in finding the products that best fit their enterprises’ IT environments.

You can read the full Gartner 2019 Critical Capabilities for Identity Governance and Administration report here, courtesy of Omada.

Gartner defines Critical Capabilities as “attributes that differentiate products/services in a class in terms of their quality and performance.” As such, Gartner rates each vendor’s product or service on a five-point scale indicating how well it delivers each capability; on this scale, five points are best.

Additionally, the Critical capabilities reports include comparison graphs for each use case, along with in-depth descriptions of each solution based on the various points of comparison.

The Gartner 2019 Critical Capabilities for Identity Governance and Administration highlights 11 vendors researchers consider the most significant. Then, they evaluate these vendors against nine critical capabilities and four distinct use cases.

The vendors listed in this Critical Capabilities report include Atos (Evidian), Broadcom (CA Technologies), Hitachi ID Systems, IBM, Micro Focus, Omada, One Identity, Oracle, SailPoint, SAP, and Saviynt.

Meanwhile, Gartner’s list of critical capabilities for identity governance and administration solutions includes identity life cycle, entitlements management, and auditing. Additionally, Gartner’s researchers note the importance of access request processing, policy and role management, and access certification.

The editors of Solutions Review read the full Gartner report. We pulled out the following key findings:

Critical Capabilities Continue to Evolve in IGA

Gartner’s researchers note that while IGA capabilities prove mature, some vendors continue to struggle with identity analytics. Identity analytics contribute to privileged account discovery, access policy analysis, and reporting. Indeed, identity analytics vary among the vendors, and few offer advanced analytics.

Also, Gartner acknowledges the marked difficulty in identity governance deployments. While researchers believe identity governance’s administration and user access controls appeal to large enterprises in particular, deployment issues still occur. Often, this stems from underestimation; enterprises fail to recognize the effort and necessary skilled staff necessary for success. Perhaps then it is no wonder that half of all IGA deployments are in distress.

Hence, the Gartner 2019 Critical Capabilities for Identity Governance and Administration recognizes the increasing popularity of cloud delivery. The majority of the included vendors offer SaaS-delivered capabilities. Moreover, most vendors offer managed services for automated deployment and maintenance.

Predictions in the 2019 Critical Capabilities for Identity Governance and Administration

Of course, no Gartner report would feel complete without expert predictions about the future direction of the market.

For example, researchers believe by 2022, SaaS-delivered IGA solutions shall either augment or replace 75 percent of existing implementations. Currently, SaaS-delivered solutions only augment or replace 30 percent of software-delivered IGA implementations globally.

Additionally, clean analytics will double the ROI of IGA implementations by 2022. Further, by 2022, more than half of all identity governance vendors shall offer predictive engines powered by machine learning. Currently, only 15 percent of vendors offer this.

4 Distinct Use Cases

The Gartner report outlines four distinct use cases in IGA. These include global enterprises, midsize enterprise, governance-focused infrastructures, and automation-focused enterprises.

For governance-focused enterprises, they focus on managing and enforcing access policies and demonstrating control over user access. Meanwhile, automation-focused businesses emphasize IT infrastructure efficiency and control simultaneously through end-to-end automation.

How to Learn More

Check out the Gartner 2019 Critical Capabilities for Identity Governance and Administration here, courtesy of Omada. Also, you can check out the Identity Governance and Administration Buyer’s Guide from Solutions Review. We cover the top solution providers and their key capabilities in detail.

Ben Canner

Ben Canner is an enterprise technology writer and analyst covering Identity Management, SIEM, Endpoint Protection, and Cybersecurity writ large. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English from Clark University in Worcester, MA. He previously worked as a corporate blogger and ghost writer. You can reach him via Twitter and LinkedIn.