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IBM Tivoli Access Manager [EOL] vs One Identity Active Roles comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Tivoli Access Manager [...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
One Identity Active Roles
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (3rd), Active Directory Management (1st), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

it_user711612 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Reverse proxy provides central control over authentication and authorization.
It is a single product that caters for all the business needs throughout the organization. It provides a seamless integration that in turn encourages most of the applications to use the SSO features Reverse proxy is the most valuable feature as it provides central control over authentication and…
Varun Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
collaboration support engineer at a retailer with 11-50 employees
Automation has transformed onboarding and access control and now streamlines daily governance
While One Identity Active Roles is a strong identity and access management solution overall, there are a few areas where it could improve. One challenge we experienced was the initial setup and configuration complexity. Deploying workflows, policies, and delegation models require careful planning and a good understanding of the Active Directory environment. For organizations without experienced administrators, the learning curve can feel quite steep in the beginning. The user interface could also be more modern and intuitive. Some administrative tasks require navigating through multiple menus and the overall experience could be simplified for faster day-to-day management. Another area for improvement is reporting and customization. While the auditing features are good, creating highly customized reports sometimes requires additional efforts or scripting knowledge. More built-in reporting templates and easier dashboard customization would be helpful. We have also noticed that troubleshooting workflows or synchronization issues can occasionally take time because the logs can be very detailed and technical. Better diagnostic tools and simpler error explanations would improve the operational experience. That said, once the platform is properly configured and maintained, it performs reliably and delivers strong automation, delegation, and governance capabilities. One additional area where One Identity Active Roles could improve is cloud integration and hybrid environment management. While it works well with Active Directory and the Microsoft environment, organizations moving heavily towards cloud-first infrastructure may want even deeper and more seamless integration with modern SaaS platforms and identity providers. Performance optimization in large environments could be improved. In very large enterprise deployments with complex workflows and multiple managed domains, some administrative actions and synchronization tasks can occasionally feel slower than expected. Another point is documentation and onboarding resources. The product is feature-rich, but some advanced configurations require going through extensive documentation. More practical examples, guided setup wizards, and easier to follow best practice guides would help new administrators adopt the platform faster. Overall, the core functionality is solid, and most of the pain points are related more to usability, complexity, and modernization rather than the reliability. One additional improvement I would mention is around integration flexibility with third-party ITSM and DevOps tools. While the platform integrates well within Microsoft-centric environments, broader out-of-the-box integration and simpler API workflows for non-Microsoft ecosystems would make deployment and automation easier for organizations using diverse infrastructure. Another area is upgrade and migration simplicity. In enterprise environments, version upgrades and environment migration sometimes require careful planning and testing. Streamlining that process with more automated compatibility checks and migration assistance would reduce operational overhead.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Capabilities of advanced security are enhanced to support strong, flexible authentifications and authentications based on risks as well as critical internet vulnerabilities."
"It has helped them to improve and control web and mobile application security."
"The WebSEAL reverse proxy is great for protecting your critical systems."
"It is one of the best products in the present market in the area of access management."
"Tivoli Access Manager (or IBM Security Access Manager) is a fully featured web authentication, sso and authorization product."
"It is a good solution for anyone to take to their enterprise and get a buy in."
"The SSO, URL-based access control, OAuth 2 and OIDC are the most valuable features."
"Single Sign-On functionality is valuable because the core purpose of the product is to allow universal (or bespoke) SSO for application suites."
"One Identity Active Roles has positively impacted our organization by making Active Directory management much more efficient, reducing manual work, improving control over permissions, and providing better visibility into changes, which has helped both security and compliance efforts."
"The return on investment from One Identity Active Roles has been incredibly clear and measurable for us, with the efficiency in user provisioning and offboarding, which used to take almost 24 to 48 hours due to a multi-step process, now down to just 5 minutes, and a nearly 80% drop in ticket escalation queues after safely delegating tasks to the help desk through clean access templates."
"The provisioning and deprovisioning saves a lot of time and skips a lot of errors."
"We have seen a good return on investment because the automation feature has reduced manual efforts by around thirty to fifty percent and improved efficiency with reduced workload, saving our engineers time."
"One Identity Active Roles has had a strong impact on Active Directory operations by reducing manual administrative workload, improving access governance, and standardizing provisioning and permission management procedures."
"Another good feature is the change history. It's centralized in a single place and allows us to manage people's Active Directory domains from a central location. We can also drill down into individual objects in a troubleshooting or even an auditing situation. We can show evidence to auditors by drilling down into the individual history. It gives you all the history of what happened around an individual object. That is something that would be almost impossible to do in Active Directory, or extremely complicated."
"It provides automatic provisioning/update/deprovisioning workflows from a source system to a target system."
"Overall, One Identity Active Roles has significantly reduced the complexity and workload in Active Directory administration in our organization."
 

Cons

"What I don’t particularly like is the flow duration."
"The license model is pretty complex."
"The self-service portal needs improvement."
"There is only a single step-up authentication path, but I have sometimes seen the need for several steps or a divergent path."
"I would rate the technical support a 6/10."
"There were endless issues with stability in version 8.0.1."
"The product has not been updated with emerging technologies over the years specifically around AJAX, REST and Mobile app integration."
"You must be skilled to use Tivoli Access Manager."
"One specific issue I have encountered recently is that the interface and workflow configuration can become complex and less intuitive, especially when managing multiple approval steps or modifying existing workflows, which sometimes requires deeper scripting or backend adjustments, so more user-friendly and visual workflow design would be a great improvement."
"I did not rate One Identity Active Roles at the highest level because areas such as user interface modernization, workflow complexity, troubleshooting experience, reporting capabilities, and cloud integration still have room for improvement."
"The initial setup was quite easy, but it was time-consuming. It took about three months."
"One area where One Identity Active Roles could be improved is troubleshooting and visibility."
"One Identity Active Roles can be improved by simplifying the setup process since a small team in a small business requires implementation without extensive IT support."
"Another improvement I would like to see is better troubleshooting capability when dealing with complex delegation models or workflow-related issues."
"For the AAD management feature, it needs to improve the objects that we can manage and the security."
"It also has workflows and those are really powerful, but there are no built-in workflows. When it comes to them, it's empty. I would personally love for it to come with ten, 15, or 20 workflows where each achieves a certain task... I could just look at how each is done, clone them, copy them, modify them the way I want them, and be good to go. Right now we have to invent things from scratch."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The IBM prices are, as ever, extortionate, even with a business partnership, and high levels of discounts."
"The licensing model is a simple user-based model, not that much complicated."
"The price is reasonable. It costs us about 1 million Danish kroner annually, and we also spend about half as much on consultants."
"It's expensive."
"The pricing is on the higher end."
"It's fairly priced."
"The pricing is high. I have not been involved with the renewal or cost aspect, but I know it is not cheap by any means. However, it is very useful for our environment."
"The pricing for Active Roles is expensive but not as expensive as other solutions like Okta."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business90
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise42
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for One Identity Active Roles?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for One Identity Active Roles are enterprise-oriented and typically based on the number of managed users or accounts. While setup requires moderate implementa...
What needs improvement with One Identity Active Roles?
One Identity Active Roles can be improved with a more modern user interface, better reporting and analytics capabilities, simplified workflow customization, improved troubleshooting tools, and stro...
What is your primary use case for One Identity Active Roles?
One Identity Active Roles serves as our centralized Active Directory administration platform for identity lifecycle management, including automated user provisioning, delegated administration, role...
 

Also Known As

Tivoli Access Manager, IBM Security Access Manager
Quest Active Roles
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Essex Technology Group Inc.
City of Frankfurt, Moore Public Schools, George Washington University, Transavia Airlines, Howard County, MD. See all stories at OneIdentity.com/casestudies
Find out what your peers are saying about One Identity, SailPoint, Omada and others in User Provisioning Software. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.