We were using some other tool previously. At one point, a requirement came up for a more stable and enterprise-wide solution, so we decided to invest in the CA tool.

This happened before my time, so they actually had either a home-grown product, or they had some legacy systems for provisioning or for authentication. They had a different product which wasn't doing exactly the same thing, but this a very mature product. This has been there for a long, long time, for the past 20 years now.

Some of our clients, at times, have thought of using different solutions. The main reason for that is sometimes they do not have skill to harness the capability of this product along with the features that it offers.

When the client approaches CA, it provides an answer that is more product-oriented, rather than solution-oriented, so there is a communication gap. When we are at the client's side, we bridge this gap and that's why our customers are more successful working with us and CA together, rather than working directly with CA.

We have customers who have migrated from Siteminder. If you compare Siteminder to the many other products available in the market, the new products are more modern, enhanced, and offer more features. If a company thinks that they want to use those features, they migrate from Siteminder. Any new product that is coming up in the market will always bring something new to add, and it can attract more customers and companies. 

When you go through different management changes, a new manager comes in and they like different vendors so we've tested different vendors throughout it. We've been through some mergers and we've tried the Oracle's product and we were told to use that on some new systems. It hasn't proved to work real well. Now that we're moving forward, we believe that the CA SSO probably offers the best solution going forward for a single sign-on.

We were using something previously but I don't recall what it was. In terms of switching, it's a similar decision chain to what you think about when you need to invest in an upgrade. Is there a problem with stability? Is there a problem with scalability? Does the solution meet the evolving needs of your enterprise? 

From what I've heard, the solution that was in place in the past was very unstable. In terms of comparison, Single Sign On is much more stable from what we've seen, than the previous candidate. That's why we decided to make a change. We evaluated the options at hand, and selected Single Sign On to move forward.

I used Netegrity 3.0 in a previous job.

We were not using any other solution. We have been using this product for at least nine years.

We had a predecessor to it which was near end of life. I knew this product because I was part of CA previously.

We went with CA because it met most of our requirements. We had a requirement list of what we definitely wanted, what was nice to have, and I could see most of what we wanted.

We were not using any other product before this one.

Initially we didn't find the need to invest in building ourselves. We had an in-house product that we had developed and as time passed by, there were some security holes that can be found in any existing product. It wasn't cost effective for us to maintain it. Hence, the decision to purchase a third-party software like CA Single Sign-On/Shibboleth/CAS made a lot more sense as the expense incurred for purchasing any of these products was much less than for us to create or develop our own in-house solution.

Basically, it did not make a lot of sense to try and reinvent the wheel when nothing unique was needed for our organization. It was just more logical to buy another tool versus using an in-house product.

For a long time, we used SiteMinder, We're currently looking into what might be a better solution for SSO. That's why we're currently evaluating CA SSO. We'd been using the previous solution for two or three years but it hasn't been able to provide us with what we needed. Currently, we're trying to implement CA on servers for IPMP.

We had no choice. We were growing too big. We had a homegrown solution in place six years back, and our CTO at that point made a conscious decision to go towards this approach. And it worked.

I think CA had a pre-existing relationship with our company. And our CTO had used a CA SSO product before, and the recommendation was made at that point. So I don't know whether it was a full evaluation that was done, or whether it was the fact that, "Hey, it is a product that had worked before in other places, and we're talking about a straightforward use case here. So let's just go for it."

In terms of advice to someone looking for a similar solution, this one has worked for us, so think of whether it fits into your space. It may be best-in-class for doing a particular type of function, but that doesn't mean it fits in your ecosystem. So think of that first before you pick something which is best-in-class.

We’ve always been using this, and beforehand we used a homegrown solution. We switched because it had insufficient automation and our homegrown solution was just too inflexible.

No previous solution was used.

I wasn't involved in the initial roll-out or the initial discussions around the solution. From previous experiences, it's usually, a company realizes, if you're part of the security team or the identity team, if the company gets to a certain size, they try to find ways to make things easier to do; not only for employees and customers, but also for audit compliance.

Within that space, there are a handful of companies that do it and they each have their own reputation. CA has a reputation of being a simpler product to use, in some ways, as compared to Oracle, which is a pretty complicated product to roll out. There's a handful of players. Usually, if CA wins, then CA is there.

I wasn't necessarily involved in the decision to invest in a solution like CA SSO . I was brought on post that decision, but it can really be summarized as: The previous solution was a combination, a kind of hybrid, of a third-party vendor who we fell out with, and some home-produced stuff that was clearly not fit for purpose. There were commodity products out there that could do it, and SiteMinder, CA SSO as it is now known, was the best and most scalable one at the time. We have a large enterprise, so it was the obvious choice.

No.

This decision was made before my time. I came in when the decision was made to go with CA for identity management. Our company was going through a transition of ownership and all the decisions were made at the time. That was about 7 or 8 years ago.

We required such a product, as we were using an old solution. That’s how we started using CA Single Sign-On with the CA SiteMinder.

This is the first solution that we have tried.

Previously, I used Arcon as a bridge to build access management. Arcon is different from CA SSO single sign-on.

I changed jobs and in this new location, Arcon was deployed.

We started to use the product before it was CA. It used to be another company's product. CA bought the company a couple of years ago. I do not remember who it was actually.

Others in my company had done the due diligence because once you’re married to the product you cannot change. But I don’t think CA SSO is the best out there right now.