CASE STUDY
CIAM Without Borders: ABB’s Remote, Resilient, and Scalable Identity Revolution with WSO2
Product Area
Identity and Access Management
Region
Europe
Industry
Manufacturing
Highlights
Seamless Onboarding of 50+ Applications:
Enabling accelerated digital identity at scale across ABB Motion’s fast-growing digital ecosystem.
Empowered Ecosystem with 100% Self-Service:
Delivered a flexible, self-managed CIAM model for all of ABB’s customers, partners, and distributors.
Global Rollout, Zero Downtime:
Remotely deployed across three countries with uninterrupted operations.
Overview
ABB is a global technology leader whose focus lies in driving transformation across industries to achieve a more productive and sustainable future. The company comprises four divisions; Electrification, Motion, Process Automation and Robotics & Discrete Automation that facilitate its ethos of “Engineered to Outrun”. Operating in over 100 countries, ABB empowers industries like utilities, transport, manufacturing, and infrastructure to electrify, automate, and digitally optimize operations. As a Fortune 2000 company with a 130-year legacy of innovation, ABB drives industrial innovation through energy distribution, automation, and robotics—enabling greater productivity with less environmental impact. Its core promise is to deliver electricity from any source to any plug, and automate processes from raw materials to finished products.
What truly sets WSO2 apart is the way they prioritize their customers. I was impressed by the personal engagement from their leadership—Sanjiva and Ricardo even visited me in Helsinki to understand our needs firsthand. They weren’t focused on selling a product; they were genuinely committed to helping us solve our challenges. That customer-first mindset, where support and helpfulness come before anything else, is what made working with WSO2 such a positive experience."
Kumar Subramanian
Head of IoT Backend Services Program
ABB Motion
Challenge
Within ABB, the Motion division focuses on manufacturing electrical drives, motors, and digital solutions that enhance energy efficiency and operational performance. This division plays a vital role in electrifying industrial systems and enabling automation in sectors such as water treatment, mining, oil & gas, HVAC, and smart buildings—sectors where efficient and secure digital access is critical to maintaining uptime and operational safety.
As part of its digital transformation, ABB’s Motion division launched a strategic initiative to build a centralized customer identity and access management (CIAM) system to support its expanding portfolio of digital solutions. Previously, each application had evolved in silos, building its own login and access systems, each application maintained its own authentication and authorization system, resulting in fragmented identity management, security gaps, inconsistent user experiences, and high maintenance overhead.
ABB also faced growing cybersecurity pressures. Its industrial control systems required stronger access controls to prevent unauthorized access, while its internet-exposed products needed to meet stringent security standards. Without centralized identity oversight, threat detection, and incident response were slow, increasing compliance and operational risks. The company sought a partner—not just a vendor—who could offer agility, direct collaboration with technical teams, and immediate access to leadership. They needed a solution that could scale cost-effectively, ensure resilience, and support open-source flexibility for long-term independence.
Objective
- Build a centralized CIAM framework: Establish a robust, centralized CIAM system that could easily integrate with multiple applications and scale alongside ABB Motion’s expanding digital ecosystem.
- Adopt a future-ready, federated identity model: Implement a solution that could federate seamlessly with external customer identity providers, creating a flexible and interoperable ecosystem for identity management.
- Ensure operational agility and enable remote collaboration: Given the constraints during the COVID-19 pandemic, ABB Motion prioritized a solution and implementation approach that could be executed efficiently through remote collaboration across global teams.
Solution
To meet its evolving customer identity and access management (CIAM) needs, ABB’s Motion division implemented Asgardeo as the backbone of its CIAM platform. Asgardeo provided the scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency ABB needed to unify identity management across ABB’s growing digital application portfolio while supporting federated authentication with external identity providers. By integrating Choreo components, ABB strengthened authorization controls to protect critical industrial systems and ensure compliance with cybersecurity standards. The solution allowed customers, partners, and distributors to independently manage authentication and access—reducing admin overhead and improving response times.
This architecture was critical for ABB Motion, where operational platforms often span energy distribution networks, robotic manufacturing lines, and automated processing plants—all requiring real-time, secure, and auditable digital interactions. Deployment was successfully executed through remote collaboration across ABB Motion’s and WSO2’s global teams. WSO2’s responsive, hands-on approach enabled ABB Motion to rapidly implement a secure, resilient CIAM platform despite global disruptions.
Results
- Established a scalable and resilient CIAM foundation: ABB Motion deployed a robust CIAM platform powered by Asgardeo, serving as the central engine for federated authentication and authorization across its expanding ecosystem of customer-facing systems.
- 50+ applications onboarded: Streamlined access control and eliminated identity silos across more than 50 applications with the CIAM platform.
- Fully self-service identity management: ABB Motion’s CIAM solution empowers customers, partners, and channel stakeholders with a complete self-service model—enabling independent configuration of authentication, authorization, and access settings to boost efficiency and scalability.
- Enhanced security & compliance: Strengthened authorization and cybersecurity controls to protect industrial networks and meet regulatory standards.
- Secure, flexible authorization with Choreo: Integrated Choreo components bolstered ABB’s authorization framework, delivering fine-grained, secure access control aligned with modern application needs.
- Remote global rollout: Achieved seamless deployment with coordination between teams in Finland, India, and Sri Lanka, ensuring zero downtime and uninterrupted operations.
- Trusted customer-centric partnership: ABB Motion benefited from WSO2’s highly responsive, relationship-driven engagement model—marked by direct access to senior leadership, proactive support, and a focus on solving business problems rather than pushing sales.
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