Key Takeaways from SailPoint Navigate 2024: Insights on IAM, Machine Identity and More

Overview

The IAM conference allowed us to interact with the SailPoint user community, learn about SailPoint’s vision of the future, and catch up with colleagues and friends. This year saw SailPoint taking their talents to South Beach - well, maybe a little further north in Miami, but it was a new city and venue for the conference. The conference center in Orlando felt larger and more active with the bigger venue and nearly 2,000 customers, partners, and SailPoint employees. 

Throughout the various keynotes, breakouts, and conversations, several key themes emerged that are important to highlight.

Machine Identity Management

This was a hot topic at the conference.  SailPoint announced their new product in the identity security cloud: Machine Identity Security. Built on the SailPoint Atlas platform, this extends ownership and lifecycle capabilities to non-human identities across the enterprise. IAM solutions have always struggled with machine identities because authoritative sources for accounts are limited and their lifecycles differ greatly from human identities. With improved visibility and lifecycle management, organizations can successfully manage and audit machine identities as their population continues to grow.

The Migration Conundrum

Everyone was talking about migrations in general and specifically IdentityIQ to Identity Security Cloud: when do we do it, how hard is it, do we do it in phases, how long does it take?  The reality is that all IdentityIQ customers are on the path to the cloud. I’m sure that IdentityIQ will be supported for years to come, but the bulk of the investment is going into ISC and will continue to do so. The advantages of AI and the speed of deployment are truly compelling drivers to migrate to the ISC.

The best advice for customers is that there is no “magic button”; every migration looks different, just as every business does. IDMWORKS has developed a migration methodology and toolkit to help customers accelerate the transition to the cloud, but the conversation starts long before that. IDMWORKS is working with customers to plan for an ISC migration; helping them assess the process changes, schedule, and communication required for a full migration.

Customers Sharing the Same Challenges

One of the true values of the conference was the opportunity to connect with SailPoint customers and understand their journeys. It was surprising—and a little reassuring—to find that so many customers face similar challenges.

Our own Hardik Modi presented alongside APi Group’s Ryan Law on their ISC journey, particularly regarding authoritative sources. After the session, I spoke with two customers in similar industries facing the same challenges: multiple authoritative sources resulting from M&A activity and difficulties in consolidating them for IAM processes. Hardik’s session, which outlined the authoritative source data lake solution implemented for APi Group, provided them with crucial insight into other ways to solve their problems. They left with fresh ideas to take back to their leadership.

This kind of peer learning and community collaboration is part of what makes Navigate special.

Everything is Interconnected

While Navigate is a SailPoint conference, I couldn’t go more than 30 minutes without talking about other IAM solutions in the industry. These conversations were primarily not about competition, but about how all of the IAM systems are integrated and interconnected to provide a single identity fabric for the organization. Topics included ‘how ISC roles and role-mining inform access management policies’ to ‘how traditional PAM vaults integrate and help run an IGA tool’.

In one conversation, we spoke with an ISC client struggling to manage a growing tier of Oracle databases. The audit and password requirements were creating a nightmare of administration tasks rotating passwords and keeping the list of servers up to date. IDMWORKS walked them through options using the Multiconnector and Credential providers to leverage their existing PAM vault to provide the passwords in real-time and allow the PAM solution to fully take over the password rotation. These types of conversations are where an organization like IDMWORKS, with knowledge across numerous IAM products and a sole focus on Identity Management, can provide the most value to our clients.

​​Building Connections and Community

Finally, Navigate is also a great place to visit with our customers and partners and have a little fun. IDMWORKS hosted a customer dinner where our customers got to interact and share experiences over a great meal. The Navigate party, with musical guest The Fray, was a great time with a band I hadn’t heard in many years. 

We also had a great event with the Canadian team at SailPoint and many Canadian customers. This event brought similar customers together and helped walk through some of the distinct differences felt by our Canadian customers. 

The week was a great chance to catch up with colleagues and friends. IAM is a small world, tight-knit community - it was great to see everyone. IDMWORKS looks forward to the continued partnership with SailPoint and an exciting end to the year.  

Connect with our IAM experts for all of your IAM needs, or check us out at the Gartner IAM Summit in Texas starting on December 9th. 

Author: Ben Wise, IDMWORKS, VP Identity Management​