Integrating The OptimalCloud™ With Existing Federation Solutions
About The Customer
One of the most respected global engineering, construction, and project management companies in the world has over 55,000 employees and thousands of external vendor partners. They deliver landmark projects that foster longterm progress and economic growth. The company has completed more than 25,000 extraordinary projects—many first-of-a-kind—in 160 countries on all seven continents.
Challenges
The company had an existing federated identity management solution in place, so they did not need an overhaul of their federated identity management solution. However, they were faced with the following issues:
• New users could not self-register
• Administrative workflow delegation model was needed
• Real-time reporting was not showing crucial data points to effectively manage their identity management program
The company also had two main directory forests. They had an internal directory forest for employees and an external forest, for vendors and partners that allowed access to some applications. The company wanted to replace the internal directory, because it was difficult and time-consuming to manage user identities and it did not offer strong enough security to protect their data. In addition, they wanted to know who attempted to log in, who was logged in, and for how long.
In short, they wanted additional features like self-registration, workflow approval e-mails, delegated administration and better management of those identities and processes.
Solution
The company had previously implemented Optimal IdM’s virtual directory to make application deployments easier and to increase security in order to effectively manage their environment of more than 50,000 users. After extensive research and formal proposals from major players in the space, they selected The OptimalCloud as the best solution to integrate with their existing federated platform and manage their federation needs worldwide for the following reasons:
• Fully Customizable Solution – Not your standard, out-of-the-box cookie cutter solution, the OptimalCloud can be granularly configured to meet the clients’ specific needs. This means the client does not need to compromise what they want to do or how they want to do it – the solution adapts to them instead of them having to adapt to the solution.
• Higher Level of Security – The OptimalCloud does NOT require synchronization of identity data to a public cloud, which allows all of the client’s sensitive information to remain under their management and control. Not only that, but The OptimalCloud also offers another layer of security by providing a dedicated private cloud for their clients, run on an Azure platform which is extremely important for the client who needs to meet security and compliance regulations. • Affordable Pricing Model – Unlike other vendors who use a pricing model based around a per user, per month charge, The OptimalCloud, uses an affordable flat monthly fee.
• Proven and Trusted Reliability – Having been using their Virtual Identity Server (.NET LDAP virtual directory) for many years, the client already knew that Optimal IdM was a reliable partner that values customers and stands behind its products and services. With Optimal IdM’s customizable solution, care and attention to detail, it was an easy decision to move forward with The OptimalCloud. Results The OptimalCloud was first rolled out with the company’s Oracle e-business suite and provided selfregistration via their private cloud directory. We collected additional information from the user which allowed us to securely authenticate them. In addition, they have benefited from The OptimalCloud in the following ways:
• Efficiency – In addition to its capabilities, the implementation of the OptimalCloud was quick and easy and has saved the client money and countless hours on training, development and management.
• Productivity – With the Optimal development portal, the client recieves sample code, preconfigured to integrate with their environment, which allows developers to test different apps, protocols and languages before rolling them out.
• Scalability – The OptimalCloud solution future-proofs Bechtel by adapting to their needs while enabling them to scale quickly.
• Compliance – The OptimalCloud provides extensive cloud reporting using a dedicated database, which is essential for compliance regulations. The reporting tool offers granular data including who logged in, what claims they used, number of assertions and even how they authenticated.
The OptimalCloud has proven to be the perfect fit for the company, meeting all of its evolving federation and single sign-on needs. The OptmialCloud allows for seamless, secure access to both on-premise and cloud applications for users from anywhere, at any time with one single login.
