This topic introduces IDaaS CIAM, which provides enterprises with secure and scalable customer identity management solutions. It supports unified authentication, seamless experience across multiple platforms, and private deployment, helping improve user retention and brand image.
Product overview
IDaaS (Identity as a Service) is a public cloud service for identity access management provided by Alibaba Cloud for enterprise customers. IDaaS CIAM (Customer Identity & Access Management System) provides enterprises with a unified identity management solution for external users such as consumers and members. As a modern customer identity management platform, it helps enterprises build secure, reliable, and scalable customer identity management systems to achieve centralized management and unified authentication of customer identities.
Background
In the digital age, the boundaries of enterprise applications have expanded from internal employee management to external user groups, such as consumers and members. This shift has fundamentally changed the requirements for identity management systems. Traditional Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems focus on identity and permission management for internal employees, partners, and temporary staff. However, these systems often lack the features and performance needed to handle many external users.
The rapid growth of the Chinese consumer market has led to many new business models and a massive increase in the number of users. This growth places higher demands on development teams for application scaling, redesign, and security compliance. Additionally, the unique user experience expectations in China present a significant challenge for foreign companies. As a result, CIAM has emerged as a key tool for businesses to differentiate themselves and compete effectively.
Differences between CIAM and EIAM
Since 2015, consulting companies have begun to treat CIAM (Customer Identity & Access Management) as an independent product with unique requirements. Completely different from EIAM (Employee Identity & Access Management) products that focus on business efficiency, the core objective of CIAM is to assist enterprises in completing the digital transformation of customer identity information, integrating scattered internal identity systems, and unifying user identities across all external services. CIAM is dedicated to providing end users with complete identity self-service, along with a unified and smooth experience of use and registration across different platforms, thereby improving user retention and stickiness, and further creating value.
The unique requirements of customer identity management, especially the demands for scale, performance, availability, and seamless cross-platform use, make CIAM a separate market domain, completely distinct from EIAM for employee identity management.
Advantages of IDaaS CIAM
IDaaS CIAM leverages deep technical expertise and rich industry experience to offer secure, reliable, and scalable identity and permission services for customers. Key advantages include the following:
Complete account management capabilities: By accessing CIAM APIs, applications can implement basic and comprehensive capabilities such as registration, logon, password management, and account self-service, meeting the diverse business needs of enterprises.
Intuitive management console: Administrators can intuitively view user access trends in the console, perform account management, and achieve centralized monitoring and management of external user identities for the enterprise.
Private and dedicated version options: IDaaS CIAM offers private versions and public cloud dedicated versions to meet the deployment needs of different enterprises, ensuring data security and controllability.
Deep understanding of the Chinese market: IDaaS CIAM fully understands the unique needs of the Chinese market, including user habits, communication methods, and requirements for convenience, service availability, and security, providing the most localized solutions for enterprises.
Application scenarios and value
IDaaS CIAM is widely used in industries such as e-commerce, finance, education, and healthcare to help businesses solve challenges in external user identity management. A CIAM solution provides the following benefits:
Improve user experience: Provide unified and smooth registration and logon experiences, lower user operation barriers, and improve user satisfaction.
Enhance user retention and stickiness: Through identity self-service, seamless use across multiple platforms, and other features, enhance user dependence and trust in the brand, and improve user retention rate and stickiness.
Optimize brand image: Through secure and reliable identity management services, demonstrate professional corporate image and enhance brand reputation.
Reduce operational costs: Through centralized identity management, reduce enterprise investment in identity management and lower operational costs.
IDaaS CIAM provides a complete and mature set of features for consumer account management.