What Actually Makes an IAM Platform Different?
Eleven Features You Won’t Find Anywhere Else
If you have spent any time evaluating identity and access management platforms, you have probably noticed that the marketing tends to sound the same. Every vendor claims to be secure, scalable, and flexible. Those words are easy to put on a website. They are much harder to back up with specifics.
We would rather show you the specifics. Below are eleven features of the OptimalCloud that we believe are genuinely difficult, and in several cases impossible, to find anywhere else in the IAM market. If you want the short version, we also put together a quick video walkthrough covering the same ground. But for those who want the detail, here is the full picture.
Administration That Matches How You Actually Work
Most IAM platforms hand you a small set of predefined admin roles and expect your organization to reorganize around them. The OptimalCloud does the opposite. It supports robust multi-level delegated administration, which means you can push user management down to the people who actually own those relationships, whether that is a department head, a campus IT liaison, or a regional office manager. Administration can cascade through as many levels as your organization needs.
That delegation is only useful if it is precise, which is why the OptimalCloud pairs it with a robust Access Control List system. Permissions can be defined by role and configured down to the individual attribute level, controlling exactly which create, read, update, and delete rights each administrator has. You decide how much control to hand off and to whom, without worrying that a delegated administrator can see or touch more than they should.
Infrastructure Built Around Your Business, Not the Other Way Around
Many cloud IAM vendors run every customer on shared, multi-tenant infrastructure. The OptimalCloud takes a different approach. Every deployment is a private, dedicated client tenant, meaning your organization runs on its own servers with a footprint sized to your needs. It is currently the only fully customizable IAM platform delivered this way.
That dedicated model is also what makes the OptimalCloud completely PaaS agnostic. Because we are not locked into a single cloud provider, deployments can run on Azure, AWS, Oracle, or Google Cloud, and in some cases across more than one platform at once. That flexibility is a large part of how we are able to back the OptimalCloud with a 99.99% uptime guarantee, along with a service credit if we ever fall short. To date, we have never had to issue one.
The same dedicated infrastructure gives you something most cloud vendors cannot: control over your own change windows and freezes. If your organization cannot afford an update during Black Friday, or during a university’s registration period and the start of the academic year, you set the schedule around that. Updates happen on your calendar, not a shared release calendar built for every customer at once.
Data Flexibility Without the Workarounds
Identity data rarely lives in one clean place. It is spread across LDAP directories, databases, and other systems that were never designed to talk to each other. The OptimalCloud is currently the only cloud based IAM system with an embedded LDAP virtual directory, powered by Optimal IdM’s own Virtual Identity Server. It can pull identity data from essentially any source and blend it on the fly into a single, unified view, without requiring you to migrate or consolidate your existing data stores first.
On top of that, the OptimalCloud supports SCIM, both inbound to its own cloud directory and outbound to service providers for automated provisioning. That combination means data can move freely in and out of the platform in the formats your other systems already expect.
A Platform That Bends to Your Requirements
A common frustration IT leaders describe when working with other IAM vendors is being told that a business requirement simply is not supported, and that the organization will need to change its process to fit the product instead. The OptimalCloud was built from the ground up on an extensible framework with built-in hooks, so it can be adapted to meet your requirements rather than the other way around. This flexibility has been the deciding factor in a number of competitive evaluations where other vendors could not accommodate what a customer actually needed.
Support That Doesn’t Become Your Job
With many cloud IAM platforms, your own administrators end up responsible for configuration changes and need to stay current on every federation protocol involved. The OptimalCloud is delivered as a fully managed, concierge level service. Our staff handles one hundred percent of configuration, maintenance, monitoring, and updates, so your team’s time stays focused on your organization’s priorities rather than platform upkeep.
Multi-Factor Authentication Where Your Team Already Works
Finally, Optimal IdM is currently the only IAM vendor offering a native Microsoft Teams integration for multi-factor authentication. Authentication requests are delivered directly to Teams, on both desktop and mobile, so users can approve MFA prompts inside an application they are already using every day, without introducing a separate authenticator app into their workflow.
The Common Thread
Each of these features solves a real, specific problem that IT and security leaders run into when managing identity at scale: too little control over administration, infrastructure that does not bend, data that will not cooperate, a product that says no, and support that becomes another item on your team’s plate. None of them are hypothetical. They reflect how the OptimalCloud has been built and deployed for organizations that could not get this level of flexibility anywhere else.
If you would like to see these features explained in a couple of minutes, reach out and schedule a quick demo. And if you are in the middle of evaluating IAM vendors, we would encourage you to ask each one directly whether they can match these specific capabilities. It is a useful way to see past the marketing language and find out what a platform can actually do.
Contact us for more information.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes the OptimalCloud different from other IAM platforms?
The OptimalCloud is built as a private, dedicated, and fully customizable platform rather than shared, one-size-fits-all infrastructure. It combines multi-level delegated administration, an embedded LDAP virtual directory, and a completely PaaS agnostic architecture, so organizations get infrastructure and configuration options that most cloud IAM vendors do not offer.
Does the OptimalCloud offer a dedicated cloud environment instead of shared infrastructure?
Yes, every OptimalCloud deployment runs on a private, dedicated client tenant rather than shared, multi-tenant infrastructure. This dedicated model also allows customers to set their own custom change windows and update freezes around business-critical periods, such as retail peak season or academic registration.
What uptime guarantee does the OptimalCloud provide?
The OptimalCloud is backed by a 99.99% uptime guarantee, supported by its completely PaaS agnostic architecture, which can run on Azure, AWS, Oracle, or Google Cloud, including across multiple platforms at once. To date, Optimal IdM has never had to issue a service credit for downtime.
Does the OptimalCloud support SCIM provisioning and LDAP directory integration?
Yes, the OptimalCloud supports SCIM for automated provisioning both inbound to its cloud directory and outbound to service providers. It also includes an embedded LDAP virtual directory, powered by Optimal IdM’s Virtual Identity Server, that can pull and blend identity data from multiple sources in real time.
Can the OptimalCloud send multi-factor authentication prompts through Microsoft Teams?
Yes, Optimal IdM is currently the only IAM vendor offering native Microsoft Teams multi-factor authentication. MFA prompts are delivered directly inside Teams on both desktop and mobile, so users can approve login requests without a separate authenticator app.
How do we get started or see it in action?
Visit Optimal IdM to learn more or request a demo and our team will walk through the Microsoft Teams integration live.
