Putting Identity in the Centre of Your Cloud

Global cloud IT infrastructure spending is expected to reach $74.6 billion in 2021. Why is everyone migrating to the cloud? On-demand services, readily accessible data, resource pooling, scalability - the list goes on.

So, what about identity governance? Why does automating identity processes get neglected as a legacy on-premise system while the rest of your business undergoes digital transformation?

If you’re migrating to the cloud, placing the identity at the centre of your cloud strategy facilitates every other user-based activity within your business.

It’s now about finding the right cloud identity governance solution for your organisation, then you can streamline your automation and meet regulatory compliance.

The Drawback of On-Prem

Organisations are still spending money on legacy virtual servers, virus protection, network design, firewalls, operating systems, upgrades and more, all to secure and maintain their on-premise identity governance system.

If you’re migrating the systems your employees, partners and customers use to a cloud environment, it’s logical and secure to leverage the power of cloud-native identity governance. Forget maintenance work, patches and upgrades that take away from the focus of your business. With the benefits of cloud, you can focus on measuring results.

Why is Everyone Migrating to the Cloud?

1. Accessibility of data

Cloud computing has a plethora of benefits that have blossomed amidst Covid-19, with the key value being the accessibility of data via the internet from any place, time, or device (depending on authentication and authorisation, but more on that later).

2. Automated scalability

If you don’t know how many IT resources you need, the cloud enables automated scalability when demand changes. Data storage capacity, computing power and networking can be scaled up or down within existing infrastructure without disruption to user experience. For contrast, scaling with on-premises can take months to build new physical infrastructure, also costing a small fortune.

3. Reduced burden on IT team

Cloud services also allow you to shift the responsibility of managing certain aspects of software, such as servers, storage and networking. Let your IT team focus on other important matters.

4. Security and user experience

Cloud service providers (CSPs) tend to have a team dedicated solely to cybersecurity, upon which you can rely for routine patches and updates without downtime for your team. Security and productivity for your users is crucial in a successful organisation, which good cloud providers do for you. CSPs also offer collaboration functionality with data encryption, providing a secure environment for shared working. This work is also recoverable in an incident of physical hardware loss, such as an employee losing their laptop.

5. Lower costs

Not paying for on-prem hardware results in lower upfront costs, as well as reduced operational and administrative costs by relying on an experienced team of experts to manage the software for you.

6. Agility and innovation

Leading CSPs have the flexibility to work within any infrastructure and integrate with other cloud applications so your IT environment can ultimately be entirely cloud-native. Cloud software has the cost benefit of agility and scalability too – as technology evolves and your business grows, upgrading and upscaling your cloud services is easier and cheaper than investing in new hardware or office space.

What’s the Cloud IGA Solution For You?

It’s important to find the right identity governance and administration (IGA) solution for your organisation. Three important factors to bear in mind are:

1. User adoption – finding a solution with an intuitive UI and easy-to-learn platform is the best way to get your employees on board with a new identity solution. One sure-fire way to do this is to find a solution that sits natively on the cloud platform you already use. If you have ServiceNow, there’s ServiceNow IGA, for example.
   
2. Expertise – in-house identity experts can be hard to find and expensive to recruit. If your organisation lacks an in-house team, leveraging the experience of external IAM professionals enables low-cost and reliable maintenance.

Intragen’s solution, Intra1, is managed by a team of world-class IGA specialists who have worked on hundreds of successful projects. Your business is in trusted hands with Intragen’s expert consultants handling the day-to-day management, upgrades and patches so your IT team can focus on important tasks.

3. Consistency and visibility – managing your identities across all applications enables a streamlined system and visibility of your IGA. This eliminates the frustrations of having identity management in different applications in your organisation.

For expert advisory on cloud migration and identity governance, talk to one of our specialists today.