Federation Protocols
Optimal Federation & Identity Services work as stand-alone services or integrated with an existing STS, including ADFS 2.0, ADFS 2.1 and ADFS 3.0. Other WS-Federation and SAML 2.0 federation systems are also supported. For more information on Optimal IdM’s Federation & Identity services, contact Optimal IdM today or request a free trial of services to see what solution is right for you and your business.
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Cloud vs. OFIS Comparison
Understanding costs differences between Identity as a Service (IDaaS) and On Premise Deployments
Background
Usage of the cloud has become more and more prevalent, even for areas that were classically on premise deployments. For example, the cloud Identity as a Service (IDaaS) market has grown substantially over the last few years. A major reason for the cloud adoption is that organizations have started to understand the true costs of maintaining an on premise identity deployment. Historically organizations didn’t realize the true cost of maintaining the solution until after it was purchased and deployed. [wpex more= “Read more” less= “Read less”] Once deployed, employees needed to be trained and become “experts” to be able to fully support and maintain the environment and unfortunately many identity management deployments are complicated. Over time organizations have started to realize that by leveraging cloud based solutions they can effectively outsource these deployments to organizations that specialize in certain areas. For example, Optimal IdM’s cloud solution (TheOptimalCloud.com) is being leveraged by our clients who recognize that we are federation experts and can more easily deploy, maintain and monitor their federation infrastructure. This allows their staff to focus on what they are doing now and not have to become Federation experts. Optimal IdM has created federation connections to hundreds of applications (relying parties) and we have had to make many tweaks along the ways. For example, one cloud application that we have integrated with is case sensitive in their URL’s, even though the federation specifications call for case insensitivity. Another application did not properly deflate their SAML2 authentication request[1]. It is difficult to identify the actual cost in terms of man hours that your staff will deal with each and every one of the applications that you integrate with, but in our experience, there will be many hours spent troubleshooting and debugging. Using The OptimalCloud means that your staff spends no time on configuring or troubleshooting any of these applications. [1] “SAML requests or responses transmitted via HTTP Redirect have a SAMLRequest or SAMLResponse query string parameter, respectively. Before it’s sent, the message is deflated, base64-encoded, and URL-encoded, in that order. Upon receipt, the process is reversed to recover the original message.”
Cost Comparison – Cloud vs On Premise
Up Front – One Time Costs
| UP-FRONT COSTS |
ONPREMISE |
CLOUD |
EXPLANATION |
| SERVER HARDWARE |
$60,000 |
$0 |
Cost of the server (hardware) (10,000 per server @ 6 servers) |
| SERVER SOFTWARE |
$9,000 |
$0 |
Typical cost of Windows Server OS and Client Access Licenses ($1,500 X 6 ) |
| BACKUP HARDWARE & SOFTWARE |
$2,000 |
$0 |
Typical cost of a backup solutions and backup software |
| ANCILLARY SERVER EQUIPMENT |
$1,500 |
$0 |
UPS (battery backup), Switch, Rack, etc. |
| SSL Certificates |
$400 |
Included |
SSL Certificates* |
| On premise identity management software |
$100,000 |
Included |
No need to purchase on premise software. |
| TOTAL UP-FRONT COSTS |
$292,900 |
$8,500 |
|
*If vanity certs are needed there will be a cost
Monthly Costs
| MONTHLY COSTS |
ONPREMISE |
CLOUD |
EXPLANATION |
| PROACTIVE MAINTENANCE & MONITORING |
$9,375 |
$1,000 |
75% of the cost of 1 Full time employee ($150K a year). This is blended as the service would need to be available 24 x 7 x 365. For the cloud there is a $1,000 per IdP/SP setup. This assume an average of 1 per month |
| OFFSITE/ONLINE BACKUP COSTS |
$300 |
$0 |
Typical offsite or online backup costs |
| Energy costs for 6 georedundant servers (see footnote) |
$365 |
Included |
|
| CLOUD HOSTING COSTS |
$0 |
$4,000 |
Monthly Base Service Charge |
| Monthly Support and maintenance for on-premise software |
$1,667 |
$0 |
Annual support and maintenance |
| TOTAL estimated MONTHLY COSTS |
$11,707 |
$5,000 |
|
Total Estimated Costs – Over a 3 Year Period (One-time Costs Plus 3 years of Estimated Monthly Charges)
| TOTAL COSTS |
ON PREMISE |
CLOUD |
EXPLANATION |
| TOTAL COST OVER a 3 year period |
$714,340 |
$188,500 |
Total Cost of Ownership over estimated life/analysis period |
As you can see when comparing the cost of doing an on premise to our Cloud Identity as a Service offering, DLA Piper will save a substantial amount of time and money. Detail of the 3 year costs
Monthly Costs
| On Premise |
Optimal Cloud |
| $11,707 |
$5,000 |
Yearly Costs
| On Premise |
Optimal Cloud |
| $140,480 |
$60,000 |
Yearly Costs
| On Premise |
Optimal Cloud |
| $292,900 |
$8,500 |
3 Year Costs
| |
On Premise |
Optimal Cloud |
| 3 Years of the monthly charges |
$140,480 * 3 = $421,440 |
$60,000 * 3 = $180,00 |
| On Premise |
$292,900 |
$8,500 |
| Total |
$714,340 |
$188,500 |
Other factors to consider
Lost Revenue due to downtime
InformationWeek shed light on a 2011 study done by CA Technologies which attempted to provide an estimate of what downtime costs businesses on a broad scale. Of 200 surveyed businesses across the USA and Europe, they found that a total of $26.5 Billion USD is lost each year due to IT downtime. That’s an average of about $55,000 in lost revenue for smaller enterprises, $91,000 for midsize organizations, and over $1 million+ for large companies. You can see how important uptime is when it comes to production level systems, and why considering downtime costs is a hidden factor which shouldn’t be skimmed over.
Providing a 24 x 7 x 365 fully Geo Redundant Service
Optimal IdM’s cloud service is a fully managed 24 x 7 x 365 service that has guaranteed Service Level Agreements (SLA’s). Each day millions of users depend upon Optimal IdM’s cloud based federated identity management solutions for the authentication and security needs. This is our core business and competency and we excel at providing the best service at the best possible price.
Cost of Identity and Access Management as a percentage of Total IT budget
he article here https://www.csoonline.com/article/2129591/metrics-budgets-10-identity-management-metrics-that-matter.html explains that “Within the IT security community, identity- and access-management (IAM) initiatives are considered high value, but are notoriously problematic to deploy. Yet despite IAM’s complexity, it represents 30 percent or more of the total information security budget of most large institutions, according to IDC (a sister company to CSO’s publisher).” With the OptimalCloud, the costs are significantly lower with a quicker adoption time as well.
Energy costs estimated from this article
According to this reporter’s numbers, which use an average kWh cost for energy from the US Energy Information Administration as of January 2013, she figures that an average in-house server in the USA (accounting for both direct IT power and cooling) sucks up about $731.94 per year in electricity. [/wpex]
[wpex more= “Read more” less= “Read less”]
Custom Reports
