Microsoft Entra External ID vs. Omnissa Identity Services

In our organisation we use Microsoft Entra External ID primarily to enable non-attenders to remotely login to our tenant and access pre-prepared educational resources. As well as access to tutors, pupils can also communicate with centralised staff who can support them to gain an education. Utilising our external tenant configuration we can develop and deploy our own in house apps to unpin this support intervention.

Incentivized

Workspace ONE Access is a good fit for a variety of corporate scenarios, such as the need for businesses to provide secure access to their data and applications, the need to lower the costs associated with managing multiple user identities, and the need to boost employee productivity by streamlining access to corporate resources. It is less appropriate if you are not using all of its function and just use it for a particular function undermining its capabilities for example in our organization the use case is primarily restricted to giving staff members safe access to company information and applications which debunks its other features such as compliance and product support that it provides.

Incentivized

• One of the things that Microsoft Entra External ID does really well is creating user logins, accounts and profile. It is very easy to create them, manage them and delete them. It is fast and reliant.
• Limit access or authorization feature. We can allow different levels of authorization and access. So that not all the employees would have access to all the data. Only some relaible employees would have access and power to change anything.
• Mutli factor authentication feature is also a really good feature to secure data. Even overseas vendors need MFS to login which gives double protection to our data.

Incentivized

• It provides an "SSO" type experience for access to applications and data. Users sign in to one "portal" and then have access to whatever university systems they need to do their job.
• It greatly simplifies securing these types of access. Firewall rulesets can be made much simpler and easier to manage, as well.

Incentivized

• Troubleshooting diagnostic logs effectively requires VS Code
• Group and role management requires additional effort
• The programming model (XML) could use some developer experience love

Incentivized

• Support for more Single Sign-On (SSO) protocols.
• More comprehensive dashboards and reporting.
• Greater integration with other VMware products.

Incentivized

Microsoft Entra External ID is an all round solid product, and certainly delivers the solution to our needs well. Through use we found that Pupil's become 'experts in avoidance', if they can forget their login details or indeed their device used for MFA, they will and then use that as the excuse for not accessing/completing their assignments. If more MFA options were available (such as delegated MFA) this would really help iron out our entire end user experiences

Incentivized

I really enjoy how simple it is to connect this Active Directory with other Microsoft Products to collaborate with colleagues and clients.

Incentivized

We also examined several other options, particularly Lenovo Unified Workspace. The Lenovo product had some advantages over the VMWare product, particularly in the areas of customization of the look / feel and user experience. However, we have been a longtime VMWare customer, and we have VMWare VDI and other product implementations in place now that paired very well with the VMWare product.

Incentivized

• Having monthly active users billing was cost-effective.
• Helped with the IT support that was already managing the Azure platform of the company; this helped to manage the costs better and optimize them.

Incentivized

• Better control over organization data and its applications.
• The software has frequently allowed us to save money on application security and mobile device management.
• It offers a lot of features that may be adjusted to meet the requirements of our particular business demands, which has increased efficiency and security for our organization.

Incentivized