Item: IBM Cloud App ID
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use IBM Cloud App ID as authentication system for a demo product, where we want to show how easy it is to integrate with external authentication systems. Cloud App ID acts as a OIDC compliant Security Provider and provides the user Administration for free. So there is no need of programming the user related functionality, like self-registering or forgot password.

Pros and Cons

Easy to use
Good to understand / good documentation
Easy integration with npm module

Not many OIDC flows are supported
Permission Settings for Administration of the IAM secured service is hard to understand
The URL of the discoveryEndpoint is not easy to find

Return on Investment

Free tier to start and develop
Easy to use
Gets costly with growing userbase (price model is also not very transparent)

Alternatives Considered

We also integrated some parts of our solution with Keycloak, Red Hat Single Sign-On and Auth0.

Key Insights

Do you think IBM Cloud App ID delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with IBM Cloud App ID's feature set?

Yes

Did IBM Cloud App ID live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of IBM Cloud App ID go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy IBM Cloud App ID again?

Yes

Other Software Used

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, IBM Cloud Container Registry, Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud, IBM Cloud Object Storage

Likelihood to Recommend

Whenever you need to provide Security Provider functionality for a web based application it is well suited. You can also integrate with other directory services (e.g. SAML, Facebook, Google), but not so easily with other Auth0 based services. The customization of the login page is very intuitive, but does not allow much customisation. using the integrated Cloud Directory, you do not need to integrate with existing security providers and you can build up your own user base - including Multi-Factor Authentication settings and password policies.

IBM Cloud App ID - The easy way to add authentication

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cloud App ID