WSO2 Named a Strong Performer in “Customer Identity and Access Management, Q4 2020” Report by Independent Research Firm
- Prabath Siriwardena
- Senior Director - Security Architecture - WSO2
The Forrester Wave™: Customer Identity and Access Management, Q4 2020 report1 was just published on October 8, 2020. We’re thrilled to announce that WSO2 Identity Server has been named a Strong Performer! WSO2 was one of “13 providers that matter most” in the new report evaluating CIAM providers on 32 criteria. You can download the report here.
In the Current Offering category of the report, WSO2 received scores of 5.0, the highest rating possible, in eight criteria (customer authentication; business systems integration; data orchestration and user management; customer self-service; reporting and dashboarding; privacy, consent management, and profiling; number of brands; and static and contextual documentation).
In the Strategy category, WSO2 Identity Server obtained the highest scores possible in the authentication plans; data orchestration, workflows, and user management; and commercial model criteria.
Not all IAM vendors in the market are included in the report. The research report considered the following four inclusion criteria in selecting the companies it identified as the 13 most significant CIAM providers.
- A thought-leading, productized portfolio of products and services.
- Annual CIAM revenues of at least $4 million, with at least 9.5% growth.
- Mindshare with Forrester’s end-user customers.
- Mindshare with vendors.
WSO2 Identity Server itself generates USD 10M+ in revenue, with 700+ global customers (direct and OEM), and 1000+ open source deployments, and it has a strong open source community, with 650+ members in our Slack channel.
The team and I are excited to see that our developer-focused CIAM software has been positioned as a Strong Performer. Beyond that, we are thrilled that we were recognized in one of the industry’s most prestigious analyst reports as a vendor that the report says, “…assembles open source and proprietary pieces into a versatile CIAM platform.”
WSO2 Identity Server, itself, is available as open source code. However, we provide connectors to a broad range of popular third-party proprietary apps, tools and platforms. Additionally, customers who purchase WSO2 Subscription get automatic updates, patches and support, which are not available to companies that simply download the software from GitHub.
Forrester Research, Inc. was comprehensive in their evaluation. It took almost 250 pages to answer the questionnaire, which was then followed by a three-hour demo with multiple integration use cases with many third-party systems. We also only had weeks to prepare everything. To add to this, the entire team was working from home due to COVID-19. But, our team was deeply motivated to show the world what our product is capable of!
Finally, it all ended up as an awesome team effort; and also proved how we can work together remotely and still be productive.
The following diagram shows at a high level how we set up the demo. We integrated the product with 20+ systems, and also demoed strong and adaptive authentication capabilities. I’m happy we could show what we have and we could pass on the right message. Forrester Research, Inc. rated us with the highest scores possible for customer authentication, business systems integration, data orchestration & user management, customer self-service, reporting & dashboarding, privacy & consent management, number of brands, and static & contextual documentation.
In case you are hearing about WSO2 Identity Server for the first time, you can learn about our history here.
The product started in 2007 as an open-source project under the Apache 2.0 license. We released version 1.0 in December 2007. It was just after 6 weeks after I joined WSO2, and Ruchith Fernando was leading the product (Ruchith left for higher studies in July 2008). Since the very first version of the product, I was fortunate to be part of the Identity Server team and (with great pleasure) be part of its growth from 4 to 100+ individuals, 0 to 700+ customers, 0 to 1000+ open source deployments, 0 to $10M+ in revenue, and also, from being an Information Card provider to a comprehensive CIAM offering.
It has been an awesome journey, but the best is yet to come.
Right now, we are working extensively on something big to be announced early next year. Please keep in touch via our Slack channel (https://wso2is.slack.com) and the community Twitter account (@wso2iscommunity). If you are a developer, you’ll love it.
1Forrester Research, Inc. “The Forrester Wave™: Customer Identity and Access Management, Q4 2020,” by Andras Cser with Merritt Maxim and Benjamin Corey, October 8, 2020.