CIAM: Uncovering its true potential

In this interview

We’ve all heard the buzzwords, if you are here you will probably know the difference between IAM and CIAM, but few still understand what the benefits are, and more importantly how to get the most out their CIAM initiative.

In this video, Eric Newcomer – CTO WSO2 talks to Yenlo CEO Ruben van der Zwan about this very topic. How to uncover the true CIAM potential within your organisation. It’s not merely plugging in the technical pieces, but how the organisation as a whole taps into this, and can bring about the massive potential locked within.

As a digital business, whatever stage of your digital journey you are in, CIAM will play a large part in how successful your business is today and for years to come. With the current situation we are all facing, our digital lives have changed forever. Providing an extra touch, making your customers feel your services are designed with them in mind will be the difference between you and your competitors.

Watch below introduction teaser:

Speaker

Eric Newcomer

Eric has more than 35 years of industry experience, spanning a variety of senior roles in various technology and financial services companies.
In his current role, he is responsible for driving WSO2’s technical vision and helping to promote the adoption of products and projects, with a focus on enterprise customers.

Before WSO2, he was Chief Security Architect for the Consumer Banking Division at Citibank, Chief Architect for Treasury and Trade Services at Citibank, and Chief Architect for the Investment Banking division at Credit Suisse. Before that, he was CTO at IONA Technologies and a Distinguished Engineer and Transaction Processing Architect at Digital Equipment Corp (now part of HP).

Over the years Eric has contributed to many industry standards and products based on them, including SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, WS-Security, OTS, AMQP, and XA. He is co-author of WS-Transactions and chaired the OSGi Enterprise Expert Group. Eric also served on the OSGi and Eclipse Boards of Directors and oversaw IONA’s participation in open-source projects such as CXF, ActiveMQ, and Camel. He is the author or co-author of three widely respected textbooks: Principles of Transaction Processing (with Phil Bernstein), Understanding Web Services, and Understanding SOA with Web Services (with Greg Lomow). He is also co-author of a patent on mobile messaging technology.

Ruben van der Zwan

As Co-Founder and CEO of Yenlo, I am an IT-visionair and from the first hour. I believe that digitalization enables companies to grow by creating new channels to reach their customers. Important in such a digitalization journey is to avoid lock-in’s by vendors, technology and budget. Therefore, I am a fan of an API-first, Open-Source first and Cloud-first strategy. Obviously Yenlo’s key-focus services are aligned with these key-pillars by combining WSO2 open source technology with a secure and professional cloud-solution: Connext. Our Integration-Platform-as-a-Service solution for medium and large enterprises. Want to learn more? Contact me or join conferences all around the world where I am a frequent speaker.

More information about CIAM

If you have read the new Forrester TEI assessment report, you’ve seen that they estimate an ROI <12 months for your investment on CIAM using WSO2, in the scale of things, that is the smartest investment you will make.

With this interview we look forward to share with you some foundational information on CIAM, what it is, why you should invest in it and most importantly how to use it to maximise your organisations gains far beyond a mere technology investment, and finally why not all “CIAM” vendors are the same.

IAM and CIAM may look like very similar technologically, and in fact the bases are. They are however fundamentally different concepts. Most organisations today will have some form of IAM in place already, but the argument is that this classic IAM is no longer useful, is inefficient and creates too much friction for the end user’s digital experience.

CIAM vs IAM

Enter CIAM! At the heart of any digital transformation project initiated by an organisation today, will mostly likely be a CIAM project (and if it doesn’t, then it should). Not driven by IT, but driven by people, considering the user experience, using the technology as an enabler, CIAM has become the love of internal teams within organisations (marketing, sales and other commercial departments) in an attempt to drive business. CIAM providers should be developer-oriented and their solutions ought to be user friendly.

The best CIAM solutions provide a wider choice of authenticators, and social logins like Google or Facebook. It makes it easier for organisations to acquire consumers and build trusted relationships, based on shared trust between your organisation and their login authenticator. Traditional IAM solutions did not consider this aspect of a user experience as the end user (mainly internal) was already created and set up.

Data of consumers is voluntarily provided when a consumer registers himself. The right Customer IAM solutions provide the functionality to let the user give consent to his data according to regional regulations (GDPR in Europe) such as the right to erasure and the right to portability. This goes beyond what traditional or classic IAM provides where the contract is more rigid and takes time and process to change.