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Microsoft Identity Manager vs NetIQ Identity Governance comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

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

Omada Identity
Sponsored
Ranking in Identity Management (IM)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (3rd), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (5th), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (3rd)
Microsoft Identity Manager
Ranking in Identity Management (IM)
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetIQ Identity Governance
Ranking in Identity Management (IM)
31st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Identity Management (IM) category, the mindshare of Omada Identity is 3.5%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Identity Manager is 3.9%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetIQ Identity Governance is 0.4%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Identity Management (IM)
 

Featured Reviews

Pernilla Hulth - PeerSpot reviewer
The interface is easy to use and gives you a solid overview
The cloud-based deployment was straightforward, but the on-prem deployment was in a highly complex ecosystem. Omada has matured since then. I wouldn't say that it isn't straightforward, but it depends on the customer. A standard deployment is relatively easy, but it can be more painful if you need a lot of customization. We deployed the cloud solution in around four months, nearly meeting the 12-week benchmark. The on-prem deployment took three years. It was a highly complex ecosystem that was dependent on other systems. Depending on the size of your environment, you need a product owner and some specialists for maintenance. My last customer was a university with a complex environment. They had around 12 people involved in maintenance at that organization. Typically, it's between 2-5 people.
MANUEL VALDIVIA - PeerSpot reviewer
Priced in a low range but needs to improve the support services offered to users
If we don't use Microsoft Identity Manager for data masking, we can use some other tools, like IBM InfoSphere. The scope of Microsoft Identity Manager is limited to the identity part of our applications. Microsoft Identity Manager is an old technology, and Microsoft will discontinue it soon. Microsoft Identity Manager is very complex compared with other platforms. For example, I know Microsoft Azure is working on Azure Identity. In the future, Microsoft Identity Manager will migrate to Azure Identity because Azure Identity is a software asset and is less complex. The solution's technical support is bad, making it an area where improvements are required.
JoelHercik - PeerSpot reviewer
A mature, capable solution that should be available as a cloud solution
They haven't really evolved the product to the cloud, so they don't have a cloud solution. It's just deployable in the cloud, so in some cases that holds them back in a competitive situation. I don't know if they're intent on taking their solution to the cloud, but if they do, that would be one improvement. It would allow them to be competitive down market in medium to small enterprises. I don't know if they care to address that market or not because it doesn't seem like they've made that move, but that would be one way for them to do that. As for additional features, I would suggest stronger integration. I think enabling more universal industry standard integrations would probably help them with different applications.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Two valuable features of Omada Identity are the ability to discover accounts and link them to identities, and the automatic disabling of inactive accounts or identities."
"Omada's best feature is creating accounts, automatically assigning permissions, and distributing resources based on assignment policies."
"We are able to onboard new user accounts much faster by automating the process and standardizing our operations globally. Previously, there were many individual processes and manual admin interactions. We also see a lot of cost savings and benefits because through automation and standardization."
"As an administrator, we benefit from a lot of functionality that is available out of the box, but it is also configurable to meet our specific needs."
"We don't have to go in and do a lot of the work that we did before. It may have saved us somewhere in the range of 10 to 30 percent of the time we spent on provisioning access."
"Omada offers a technical solution that addresses both our needs."
"The best feature in Omada Identity is that it enables us to implement standardized employee life cycle processes so that we don't have to create them ourselves. We can then use the standard workflows. The breadth and scope of the solution’s IGA features also fulfill our requirements."
"It has a lot of out-of-the-box features. It is flexible, and there are a lot of possibilities to configure and extend it. It is user-friendly. It has an interface that is end-user or business-user friendly."
"The tool's only feature that is generating value for us is the login process for our clients."
"Its interface and the fact that it's integrated with everything in the Microsoft ecosystem are the most valuable features."
"MIM's most valuable feature is its connectivity with Exchange."
"The most crucial feature of Microsoft Identity Manager is integration, especially with Office 365. A specific scenario where automation provided by the identity manager was crucial is when customers use hybrid clouds, with resources both locally and in the cloud. They require an easy identity solution across workspaces, local and cloud, integrating cloud identity with local identity sources, supporting single sign-on and authorizations, and ensuring security across applications.Microsoft Identity Manager integrates such local and cloud identity sources, supporting numerous applications."
"The integration with other Microsoft ecosystems, such as Graph API, is really cool."
"The concept is primarily for the people in the business. In business, you can discuss how integrating all the services and resources within the company can bring numerous benefits."
"It is one of the easiest products to implement, which is one of the main advantages. The integration is easy. Unlike other products, it is not complicated to integrate."
"Microsoft integration products are strong. That is what I like about the product."
"I really like the separation of the duties. It is the most ambitious model in the server because you have to create all the different rules, especially business rules. You have to check with the client and set different policies and rules, and then, you to have refine them. You will notice what is bad in the company and where the real problem is."
"You can run reports and verify the access each user has. There is a process that runs automatically for access review. It sends an email to the manager and provides a task for the manager to review the users and access. The manager can approve or reject, and then it goes to the application owner for further review. This feature is especially important in large customer environments, as manual review can be challenging."
"NetIQ Identity Governance has improved the security of my company."
"When doing a review you can either make manual or automatic fulfillment to immediately apply the manager's decision to the system, like removing or adding new permissions to the user account."
"This solution has been around for a long time. It has had lots of successful deployments and releases."
"I like the queries and find the catalog to be comparatively powerful."
"We’re very satisfied with technical support. Usually we get people with the right knowledge who understand the solution very well."
"All three functionalities, access certification, the configuration of duties, and role mining - especially role mining - are very advanced compared with the competition."
 

Cons

"When you do a recalculation of an identity, it's hard to understand what was incorrect before you started the recalculation, and which values are actually updated... all you see are all the new fields that are provisioned, instead of seeing only the fields that are changed."
"If I had to name one thing, it would be the user interface (UI)."
"It is not possible to customize reports on Omada Identity."
"The backend is pretty good but the self-service request access screen, the GUI, needs improvement. It's an old-fashioned screen. Also, Omada has reports, but I wouldn't dare show them to the business because they look like they're from 1995. I know they are working on these things and that’s good, because they’re really needed."
"I am not working with the product, but they have this BI tool for role-based mining, and I think that should be included in the core product rather than an add-on."
"The account management integration isn't bad, but it isn't plug-and-play like Microsoft Azure. You need some deep development knowledge to set up the connectors."
"The UI design needs improvement. One or two years ago, Omada changed its user interface to simplify, but the simplification has not really kicked in."
"The current reporting tools in Omada are limited, but we expect significant improvements in the new version."
"The documentation could be better."
"The governance reporting of the solution can be improved, as it can be difficult to get good, intelligible reports. Microsoft could implement an API of some sort to allow report customization or some form of SQL model, to further customize modules and improve the reporting. That would be a major improvement to the product."
"It would be good if Microsoft Identity Manager Maybe could be integrated with Azure Active Directory directly and made as a cloud platform."
"Microsoft Identity Manager could be more intuitive in terms of interface."
"The setup was difficult. The deployment process is not quick."
"Integration with third parties and enhanced policy management could be improved. The current policy management features are limited, and custom, flexible policies would be ideal."
"The information that is available for the Active Directory portal is segregated here and there."
"In terms of the identity and access management solution for on-premises environment, I think Microsoft needs to eliminate or minimize the number of workloads for the solution to run in on-premises environment."
"The product could use more advanced features related to Identity Intelligence."
"We need more connectors to cloud applications like AWS."
"They haven't really evolved the product to the cloud, so they don't have a cloud solution."
"NetIQ Identity Governance is not flexible. Sometimes, filtering information to provide users with options, such as selecting the application to which they want to request access, can be challenging. It needs to improve application integration as well."
"With NetIQ, you have to install two or more products. It would be better if we could install one product and have one server and one dashboard."
"The initial setup has room for improvement."
"The solution should provide more connectors in future releases. The solution also should offer more monitoring."
"Technical support is horrible."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is okay."
"Omada isn't cheap or expensive. The licensing model is flexible. I've only had limited interactions with the Omada sales team, but they were positive. They don't sell the customers more licenses than they need. It's important to accurately forecast future usage. For example, we have many licenses that we don't use because we don't have the identities yet. We pay extra, which isn't good."
"My client deals directly with the Omada Identity team in terms of licensing. I never look at pricing, so I'm not aware of how much the solution costs, but it's worth the money. Often, when you begin to use Omada Identity and it takes a while to set up, it'll be irreversible, and you'd depend on and focus more on the functionality of the solution, rather than its price tag."
"The initial total cost of ownership to implement Omada Identity is not small. The TCO for the implementation is as high as any other solution. However, the cost of maintaining the solution is at par or lower than competitors, including adding more features or maintaining the system after the initial deployment or installation to make sure that they are available for users to use or extending the functionalities of those activities. Those maintenance costs are lower than other vendors, but the initial cost of getting the system installed is still high."
"It's a fair price for the on-premises system. Compared with what we had before, it's much cheaper and we get all the modules in one. We tried to go with the cloud, but it was far too expensive."
"Omada continues to be very competitive on pricing, especially on the Omada cloud product."
"It is fairly priced for an on-premise environment, but for the cloud environment, I am not that happy with the pricing."
"It is licensed per managed user per year."
"Microsoft Identity Manager comes with the premium or community license. If the customer doesn't have a premium license, the reseller who sells the licenses of Microsoft to the enterprise can extend the license for the client."
"When comparing the cost, Microsoft Identity Manager is the best solution because it is free if you have an Azure P2 license."
"The tool's price is low for my company."
"MIM is free with a Microsoft Azure license."
"It is an expensive tool."
"The solution is included in the Microsoft E3 license and premium subscriptions of Azure AD."
"The solution is expensive."
"My rating for the pricing of Microsoft Identity Manager is average, neither too expensive nor too cheap."
"In terms of pricing, the tool seems a bit cheaper compared to other SaaS solutions."
"I give the cost a nine out of ten."
"It's expensive relative to the cloud solutions that are out there."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Omada Identity Cloud?
As an administrator, we benefit from a lot of functionality that is available out of the box, but it is also configur...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Omada Identity Cloud?
They are positioned at a good price point. They are lower than some of their competitors.
What needs improvement with Omada Identity Cloud?
The biggest issue, which is the reason why we are transitioning from their product to SailPoint, is the overall user ...
What do you like most about Microsoft Identity Manager?
The product’s simplicity and integration are valuable.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Identity Manager?
Integration with third parties and enhanced policy management could be improved. The current policy management featur...
What do you like most about NetIQ Identity Governance?
You can run reports and verify the access each user has. There is a process that runs automatically for access review...
What needs improvement with NetIQ Identity Governance?
NetIQ Identity Governance is not flexible. Sometimes, filtering information to provide users with options, such as se...
What advice do you have for others considering NetIQ Identity Governance?
The solution is worth using because of its flexibility, especially in integrating applications. However, the time req...
 

Also Known As

Omada Identity Suite, Omada Identity Cloud
MIM, Forefront Identity Manager, FIM, MS Identity Manager
NetIQ Access Governance Suite, Novell Access Governance Suite
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bayer, ECCO Shoes, Vattenfall, NuStar Energy, Unicredit, Schiphol Group, BMW Group, Deutsche Leasing
Dow Chemical Company (Dow), Whole Foods Market
Western & Southern Financial Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Identity Manager vs. NetIQ Identity Governance and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.