By Robert Coggins, Information Systems Staff Engineer, and Orlando Diaz, Information Systems Senior Manager, VMware
How does VMware provide simple access to 1,000+ apps serving 28,000+ employees around the globe?
The answer is VMware Identity Manager™, an integral component of VMware Workspace ONE®. Identity Manager delivers improved security and employee satisfaction regardless of device or geography. Now our VMware colleagues (users) can access business web, cloud, and especially native mobile apps via a single sign-on (SSO) without having to repeatedly re-login or remember an endless multitude of passwords. Today, there are 70K+ devices enrolled in Workspace ONE, spread over both VMware owned and user owned devices.
A core value proposition for VMware IT is Identity Manager being an Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) solution, a subset of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technology. We see multiple benefits of the hosted service compared to building and maintaining a traditional on-premise ecosystem, especially when it comes to costs. And there are significant savings realized with colleague, infrastructure, and license expenditures.
With IDaaS, VMware IT is able to move much more quickly in a variety of areas:
Resolving issues and adopting new features
Previous VMware IT projects that incorporated traditional on-premise solutions often took 6 – 9 months to deploy a bug patch versus an overnight remedy our engineers use today with IDaaS. In fact, VMware IDaaS is so efficient our teams have been able to resolve code bug problems overnight the day they were discovered—there are no time lags due to ‘bureaucracy’ or software policies (approvals, etc.) Even rolling out new features (and associated testing) is faster and easier than before.
These same efficiencies apply to updates, too. On-premise solutions update code and software approximately two times a year, along with scheduled updates. This hampers enterprise agility as technologies and markets rapidly change over the course of a year. IDaaS offers us the advantage of updates multiple times a day without affecting colleague productivity.
Scalability
Having Identity Manager hosted in the VMware Cloud™ gives IT a highly scalable and available infrastructure that enables on-the-fly environments to spin up in real time, without ever having to build a new data center. With a global presence, it’s important for VMware to enable secure access in multiple regions simultaneously (no more on-premise silos), and there may even be licensing benefits depending on the vendor in question. Plus, dedicated headcount is minimal versus our previous infrastructure, as personnel are only needed for specific follow-the-sun projects.
Nimble infrastructure (without infrastructure)
VMware makes multiple acquisitions each year. As you can only make a first impression once, the onboarding experience has to be great and that falls to IT. Having Identity Manager hosted in the cloud has enabled our team to quickly expand capacity, ensuring access to all development resources (thanks to SSO and conditional access) is available when new employees walk through the door. From a financial point of view, we are able to save significant upfront CapEx costs, avoiding the need to pay for additional building space, ordering and racking hardware, etc.
People saving people
As you would expect with hosting versus on-premise, IT team members are able to focus on more mission-critical (and forward thinking) tasks—there is no longer a need to devote resources to updating, patching, infrastructure management, OS or network. Hosting Identity Manager is one of the ways that we practice what we preach, enabling our IT teams to work on areas of innovation that everyone enjoys much more!
WHY IDENTITY MANAGER?
Source: VMware.com