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OpenText Access Manager with Managed Services vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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

Cisco Duo
Sponsored
Ranking in Access Management
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
163
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (5th), Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (7th)
OpenText Access Manager wit...
Ranking in Access Management
26th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Web Access Management (2nd)
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Access Management
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (13th), Web Access Management (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Charles Slaustas - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Contractor at Insight global
Supports seamless authentication for users across multiple organizations and personal portals
The features I use in Cisco Duo include Duo Pushes to confirm my identity to the device, and eventually as MFA security was increased, I actually had to use exchange passcodes. Sometimes, I have to go into the site and get into Cisco Duo to retrieve the passcode, and many of them have been two-factor, where the sites send a passcode that I have to enter into Cisco Duo. It has been more of the latter. I have not seen issues with lagging or crashing on Cisco Duo's end; it was usually on the client end, often because someone set up a bad upgrade or there were connection issues with the Cisco Duo cloud through the administrative site.
MS
Senior Specialist: Solution Architecture at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
A mature, powerful product with good integration capabilities
Since we use it to access a number of mission-critical applications, it means that we have multiple sites. We have independent instances of Access Manager deployed. What's very important for us is to ensure that the configurations across the various sites are 100% aligned. If they had a mechanism to ensure that's the case, that would be great. For example, the worst thing to do is if you run into an issue, and then you fail over to your disaster recovery environment, and then you find out that you've got a missing configuration there, it'll be great if one could easily compare configurations across instances of NetIQ Access Manager to ensure consistency. It's just about ensuring consistent configuration across various instances. Having the ability to easily extract and view and compare and version control configurations would be ideal. If you consider our scenario whereby, let's say, we've got an instance for our retail environment, and for that instance, we've got a disaster recovery environment. We need to ensure the amount of service at each of those sites. Now yes, they serve different purposes, however, for us, it's very important that site A and site B are 100% aligned. And so if there was a way to easily extract the configuration and to compare it across sites, to me, that would just make everything from an operational perspective significantly easier.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior technical Consultant at CA Africa
Improved user experience with seamless integration and easy installation
The feature that I mostly valued is the ease of installation on different systems, especially on Windows. Additionally, it is very beneficial for deploying single sign-on sessions between different windows on a web browser, provided I am connected to the right identity provider. That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco Duo scales with the growing needs of our organization by making it easy to acquire more licensing, especially with an enterprise agreement, which allows built-in growth and minimizes worries about licensing as we expand."
"It has continuously evolved by introducing new solutions and products to address emerging security threats in our industry, demonstrating its commitment to staying ahead of evolving security challenges."
"Everybody loves it. They feel a sense of security when they get that prompt to send them a text, or an email."
"Since implementing Cisco Duo, it has greatly improved our operational efficiency."
"It's easy to deploy. It's easy to manage. It's easy to integrate with other applications."
"It has definitely made our company more secure."
"Multifactor authentication and secure two-factor authentication are the most valuable features. It's been around for a while, but now it's becoming an enforced behavior as opposed to something that you used to do as optional."
"Overall, it provides functionality and security with the two-factor authentication, enabling us to mitigate rogue access requests to our network and giving our workers the ability to work hybridly and tackle day-to-day jobs securely without having to come into the office."
"The single sign-on feature is excellent."
"I would recommend NetIQ Access Manager; it is a very, very good alternative to Microsoft, Micro Focus is very big and offers good technical services, and the solution is very good, fast, simple to operate, and has very good production time to market."
"The integration is quite easy because there are a lot of options for integrating with different applications, so it is very versatile."
"The features that we have found most valuable with NetIQ Access Manager are its single sign-on and two factor two second factor database."
"It's very easy to integrate with applications."
"There are lots of options to customize the solution to your needs."
"It's a very powerful product."
"The most valuable features of NetIQ Access Manager are SSO and Multi-Factor Authentication."
"Obviously, the most valuable feature is the flexibility of the solution, it being able to be integrated with a number of applications and solutions, and also the configurability of the solution."
"All of our applications get a point, click, and you are in, while we increase security at the same time."
"Single Sign-On is the number one feature of SiteMinder that we're using."
"It allows us to get, again, both externally hosted and internally hosted web applications up and running using centralized credentials in short order."
"If you need the ability for just logging without buying an application and want good security, it’s an awesome solution."
"Symantec Siteminder Is both scalable and stable."
"The security and single sign-on (SSO) features are the most valuable."
"Right now, federation that comes out-of-the-box with single sign-on is the most valuable feature that we have, and also scalability."
 

Cons

"Smart Licensing needs improvement. It's terrible. We have problems with it every year and we need to involve support to fix it."
"We found it difficult to integrate it into our broader product family of Microsoft tools and other applications used across our organization."
"Technical support could be improved. I don't think all support should have to go through an agreement."
"Sometimes, it's a little harder for customers to adopt."
"Often, people do not receive expiration messages, and sometimes, for security reasons, accounts get disabled without notifying the end user, so they mistakenly think something has gone wrong when it really just needs to be re-enabled on the external system."
"Scalability could be better if the price were reduced, as scaling is quite expensive."
"Cisco Duo did not help reduce the cost of the overall authentication method that we have in our company; instead, it increased, obviously."
"I evaluate the stability and reliability of the solution as somewhat tricky. Cisco Duo Access Gateway is mostly VM-based, and while I'm not sure whether there is an on-premises hardware-based solution, having this VM-based solution can be buggy."
"The application portal could be improved with more options and easier customization."
"Occasionally, it's very difficult to get the solution running."
"Having the ability to easily extract and view and compare and version control configurations would be ideal."
"I would love to see the upgrade procedure handled more effectively. I would prefer to have OVS installation possibilities, although the upgrade procedures should include the OS as well. You should be able to use the whole application as an appliance."
"There is a major release going from version three to four or four to five. There seem to be issues up front, and then once you get to the third or fourth service pack to address those various issues, you're fine again."
"Classification of junctions and new versions of applications, such as APIs, can be added to enable the use of more devices that utilize biometrics for Multi-Factor Authentication to improve the solution."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the security of the infrastructure and the server and the working networking device."
"The policy store configuration, and tuning the policy store is a bit complex in ensuring it does not corrupt."
"An area Siteminder could improve on is that there are a few limitations, in terms of new protocols for OpenID. If I want to have different scopes, the features are limited. They also do not have APIs exposed, which is a major drawback. API is a feature I would like to see included in the next release."
"Not great. The first level of support is not up to the mark or able to understand the actual problem."
"Once CA has finalized the cases that we have brought to them, it will be a better product to use."
"We go by agents for authentication; anything relating to agent configuration could be improved, or even agentless security."
"We are finding some compatibility issues. We're still working with CA on them."
"Some of the new protocols, like OAuth 2.0, could be improved."
"All of the feedback within our team for CA Support is not good. It really is on a very low level, but then it is very specific for CA SSO."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From a business perspective, it is a little bit costly. The licensing is on a per-user basis."
"Their pricing model is a little bit weird. Currently, there is no price advantage in signing up for yearly contracts. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing costs."
"Cisco has the most expensive products because market leaders tend to charge a lot."
"It falls in line with everything else."
"My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco Duo has been great. We've been there for 10 years. While we haven't gone through the setup part for a while, licensing is straightforward and convenient for higher education because student populations are included. So, we don't have to pay extra for it. We just pay for our knowledge workers, which has been great, and the cost is reasonable."
"Its price is reasonable. It is not highly expensive."
"I believe the licensing model is excellent as it offers flexibility to our customers, allowing them to adopt a crawl, walk, or run approach."
"Duo Security is free."
"The price of the solution is average."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Siteminder is a little costly. You pay for licensing, and they offer packages, so if you have less users, then you have to buy different products at different prices. If you have more of a user base, then the package is different. They also include other features—for example, if you have a database and you're using Siteminder, then it's good to use a Semantic-specific database, but if you are using less, then you have to purchase the database separately. Whereas if you are going for a bigger license, then it comes within the package. It depends on which plan you are using."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Transportation Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise82
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Du...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
Regarding the pricing, what actually happened was that we got the product purchased through our HQ, so the costing as...
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
I do not have a straight answer for how Cisco Duo can be improved at this time. With the implementation that we are g...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Symantec Siteminder?
Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features. Cur...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Siteminder?
I deploy and support Symantec Siteminder ( /products/symantec-siteminder-reviews ). I have been a partner and reseller.
 

Also Known As

Duo Security
No data available
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Bancomext, Bouwend Nederland, Camera dei Deputati, CGT, Coopservice Group, Court of Appeals of Georgia, Etnic, European Automotive Manufacturer, FDM Document Dynamics, Hainan Province Information Center, Highland Community College, Huntington Bank, Johnsonville Sausage, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Mazars, Mexico's Tax Administration Service, Owens Community College, Pasco Risk, RDC, School District of Hartford, Senckenberg Nature Research Society, Sheetz, Spanish Public Employment Service, SUNY Orange County Community College, Swisscard, The Municipality of Siena, The University of Westminster, UMB Financial Corporation Invests in Identity Management, University of Dayton, University of Groningen, Vodacom, World Wide Technology
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText Access Manager with Managed Services vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.