CIAM Continues to Draw Attention as Akamai Acquires Janrain
In the past few years, customer identity and access management (CIAM) has been recognized as an independent solution, particularly compared to enterprise IAM. This recognition comes from both analyst firms and from some major acquisitions happening in the space.
Forrester, Gartner, and KuppingerCole are acknowledging CIAM in their release of vendor assessments and market reports. And SAP Hybris acquired Gigya for $350M in November 2017.
To add to this excitement, the latest news is that Akamai acquired Janrain in January. This is an odd acquisition for a content delivery network (CDN) provider like Akamai. However, it demonstrates the pivot from marketing-focused identity solutions toward security-focused solutions.
Why am I, the CEO of a leading identity provider (LoginRadius), excited by this news?
1. Customer identity management is fundamental for security.
The biggest threat to a brand is the breach of customer data and accounts. We’ve all seen how such breaches have affected Marriott, Facebook, and Equifax in recent times. Most online fraud happens primarily because of access to customer identity and data.
The very first step to protect your customers’ data and accounts is to securely manage their identities. A modern CIAM vendor like LoginRadius secures customer data and also adds advanced layers of security to protect your customer accounts and reduce fraud.
2. Customer identity is critical for every enterprise.
With growing consumer expectation around user experience and robust privacy for their information, customer identity has become critical for every enterprise. It is no longer just a feature of your digital properties, but it has significant impact on your brand value, customer retention, conversion rate, and overall revenue.
3. This acquisition validates the massive size of the CIAM market.
With SAP and Akamai investing over $500M in the CIAM space, the secret is out that CIAM is a massive market opportunity. CIAM touches almost every organization that serves customers digitally. Customer identity is no longer about a particular industry or company size or geography.
What does this acquisition mean to Janrain customers?
Gigya’s 2017 acquisition was unsettling for many Gigya customers. Lots of clients are looking for a better alternative to Gigya. I expect the same disruption is coming for Janrain customers.
LoginRadius is here to help those customers. We look forward to welcoming Janrain customers who want to stick with an agile and innovative CIAM provider, rather than a large company with zero experience in the space. If you’d like to learn how we can help you switch to LoginRadius, please send me a note on Linkedin or contact my team here.
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from LoginRadius authored by Rakesh Soni. Read the original post at: https://www.loginradius.com/blog/2019/03/akamai-acquires-janrain/
