What is our primary use case?
The solution is primarily used for governance. Clients also use it for single sign-on, to consolidate the access for B2C or B2B cases. Those are the main use cases that we've seen.
What is most valuable?
The ease of use is very good.
It's nice that everything comes out of the box in SailPoint.
Deployment takes a bit of time, however, once it's done properly, everything becomes very organized and easy to use.
The solution is completely stable. It's one of the best solutions on the market.
The solution can scale.
What needs improvement?
While you can scale the solution, it is expensive to do so. The solution, in general, is quite expensive. If the pricing was better, the adoption rate would be much higher.
Deployment can take a while.
At least in the UAE, they need more presence on the ground. It would be good to have more people to assist us to help us adopt this technology and become certified on it. The bigger the channel here is, in the UAE, the more people will start to train on it, and the cost of the deployment will become cheaper when there is competition. Right now, there's some kind of monopoly. If you have two experts in the entire UAE, they're going to raise their prices so that the cost is very high.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution for two years at this point.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of the solution is excellent. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It's a very reliable product.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable, however, companies need to be mindful of the extra costs involved.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support does not have a presence here in UAE. There's only one person that I was in contact with all the time. He's like the manager and a technical guy. He's a one-man show. That said, he's very good and very supportive. The company itself, however, does not have a presence here and they don't have an office. This one person just is mobile and is traveling most of the time.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment requires someone specialized in the solution. It can be expensive to set up, however, once it's deployed and properly up and running, it's very easy to use.
That said, the initial setup is not straightforward. Any IAM project takes some expertise to deploy, as it's not an easy technology to get going. it's the same as a SIEM solution. You need to have a good understanding of the technology and spend some time with the customer in order to completely understand his requirements. After that, you will be able to do a proper deployment.
The amount of personnel you need depends on the size of the environment, however, the bigger the environment, the more technical team you need. You need at least one expert on the site to handle the project, just one expert, who will put in the guidelines. After that, you can have, two or three junior people to do the repetitive tasks.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The license is expensive and the deployment is expensive. This is due to the fact that the experts in that field who know how to do a proper deployment are very rare, and their cost is really high. Usually, the cost of deploying about 5,000 licenses or 5,000 users, would be the equivalent to the cost of the license, which would be reaching up to around $90,000.
Users can sign up for a one-year or three-year contract.
What other advice do I have?
I'm not a direct customer. I am a reseller of the product.
Usually, for this type of solution, everyone requests it to be on-prem, especially in the Gulf area. They prefer not to opt for the cloud solution. There's still some resistance in that area.
As a technology, I would rate it at a nine out of ten. It's very good. That said, in terms of pricing, I would rate it very low, at maybe a three to four. It's also making our lives very hard as system integrators. To sell it, due to the price tag, is very, very hard.
I would recommend it to other users and companies. Overall, the product is sound.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.