If you’re reading this blog, you probably already know how important a Customer IAM solution is to your business. We hear about a major data breach exposing customer identity credentials every week, so whether your company is B2B or B2C, clearly Customer IAM matters more than ever for security and privacy compliance. But Customer IAM is also a crucial tool to gain and keep your customers’ trust and provide a positive user experience with your online services. So one important question remains: should you build or buy a Customer IAM solution?

Who should build a Customer IAM solution?

Building a customer IAM system may be better suited to you if:

  1. You have 10K+ employees and already have in-house expertise in identity management and implementation of identity standards, or
  2. You have security requirements so strict that you cannot use any third-party solution.

Who should buy a Customer IAM solution?

Everyone else.

You may think that this is a bold statement, but we have more than sixteen years’ experience in the Identity Management industry and have seen the same misjudgements time and time again…

The build vs buy decision naturally needs some consideration. For an in-depth analysis, download this white paper. For a brief overview, read on.

Building a Customer IAM system requires very specialised expertise. If built in-house, there is a serious risk that it could go wrong, not be compliant with local regulation or not scale easily as your business grows. Solutions like the Ubisecure Customer IAM platform are built by IAM experts, proven in the marketplace and are thoroughly tested, so you can be confident that they’re robust, guaranteed to be compliant and easily scaled as your business grows.

Building a Customer IAM solution in-house also means that it is your organisation’s responsibility to continuously maintain the necessary IT expertise to support the identity management setup, functions and interactions with other systems (including new systems you bring onboard in the future). This poses a significant technical challenge and long-term cost. If you buy a Customer IAM solution, third party support takes the pressure off your DevOps team, so they can focus on what they do best without delays.

The cost of building and maintaining in-house is often underestimated. Expenses such as data storage, data security, load balancing and the necessary staffing considerations – upskilling developers, managing teams, keeping training up to date etc. – are considerable. Good developers command high salaries, and a minimal enterprise-level development team may call for 6 or more such employees. 24/7 support is also needed, which would need to be managed in house, thereby adding a further financial burden.

Ultimately, our experience has taught us that buying is almost always a safer and more worthwhile investment, except in occasional circumstances. For a closer look at the pros and cons for building vs buying a customer IAM solution, along with other considerations such as on-premise vs cloud, download this white paper: ‘Build vs Buy: Finding the Right Approach to Customer IAM (CIAM)’.