Amazon Cognito vs. SAP Identity Management

Well Suited

1. B2C mobile and web apps with a high number of users.
2. Cheaper and cost-effective.
3. If the other pieces of the infra are already using AWS services like Lambda, S3, Pinpoint, etc.

Not Suited For:

1. Advanced use-cases (Biometrics based authentication) Email, and other MFA channels.
2. For any use-cases needing SCIM.
3. Customized flows of SSO, and MFA will need a layer on Lambda and other AWS services.

Incentivized

SAP Identity Management manages organization identities centrally with a great amount of flexibility and efficiency. Compared to the conventional SAP solution of central user administration (CUA), SAP IDM (version 7.2/8.0) delivers a great number of benefits like: 1. Availability of connectors for non-SAP application identity management,

2. Modular/granular access management in the form of context-based business role definition.

3. It can be integrated with the SAP HR system for making entire user identity management automatic.

Incentivized

• Strong integration with React.js and client-side applications
• Easy to bridge Cognito identities with the rest of the AWS ecosystem
• Easy to store user profile data directly in Cognito rather than having to build additional services/endpoints
• Easy integration with AWS Lambda to extend and add sophistication to the service

Incentivized

• In my previous organization, to achieve the granularity of access based on organization restrictions, we implemented enabler role-based security roles. Provisioning the enabler roles through the SAP GRC was a great challenge (realistically improbable). Here came the SAP IDM to our rescue. It has a peculiar feature of context-based business role provisioning feature.
• Customized context & its association with security roles & user HR attributes, give us unique ability to achieve granularity of access provisioning.
• SAP IDM integrates with the SAP HR system and identity management becomes automatic.

Incentivized

• Amazon Cognito has a bit of a learning curve. You need to learn its concepts and terminology. The documentation does not describe some topics comprehensively.
• Some Console screens would benefit from improved search and filtering options.
• When another AWS product (e.g., SageMaker) configures Cognito on your behalf, it is not clear what you're getting. For example, the expiration of a temporary password was configured but never communicated.

Incentivized

• SAP Identity management should come up with connectors for almost all not SAP applications, which will enable the use of SAP IDM as a one-stop solution for organizations' identity management.

Incentivized

Amazon Cognito is easy to use and implement if you don't need to implement custom policies. But if your security team requires something outside the box, then implementation becomes complicated and you risk wasting time. There is no option for customizable regex for passwords, which is a major deficiency. The standard password policy, allow to choose the length of the password, if it should contains at least one number, one special character, one uppercase letter and one lowercase letter.

Incentivized

Community support is excellent, many times even better and quicker then the offical AWS support. I really cannot recommend community support enough! Apart from that the service is relativily easy to use and does not have a huge learning curve. Examples are easy to follow and will help you start using the service.

Incentivized

As IDM heavily relies on JAVA/SQL as a development language, finding skills resources sometimes becomes challenging. But SAP has strong support available for this product which makes it reliable for long term use within an organization.

Incentivized

They are ideal tools to create a secure and unique login experience for our applications. Thanks to its API authorization, Amazon Cognito ensures connections to applications that are secure.It is easy to use and provides easy access to files and applications that you need to complete your goal.

Incentivized

SAP IDM offers a great deal of benefits/features compared to conventional access provisioning with SAP.

1. Conventional SAP user administration solution like CUA has great limitations. e.g. only SAP systems can be managed. Low-performance issues, unreliable access provisioning, and risk analysis were missing.

2. SAP IDM integrates with SAP GRC solution to perform the reliable risk analysis before access provisioning. Its context feature allows granular access provisioning.

Incentivized

• ROI is great for Amazon Cognito Overall.
• It is included in the AWS Free Tier so you can use it for a good amount without paying, so the software can be tested beforehand.
• The paid pricing is also affordable, so a positive impact on ROI.

Incentivized

• SAP IDM has the huge potential to minimize risks arising out of disorganized identity management within an organization. As all identities are managed centrally, there is very little room for manipulation of an identity.
• As this solution has the ability to integrate with SAP GRC, risk analysis becomes mandatory before any access provisioning takes place.
• As the solution is automatic, hiring to employee exits is managed with a minimal margin of error.

Incentivized