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Best IAM tool on a budget for SMB
Updated March 17, 2022

Best IAM tool on a budget for SMB

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM)

We use SolarWinds Access Rights Manager [(ARM)] across the entire organization. It was primarily put in place to meet audit requirements when granting access to AD groups, file shares and onboarding or offboarding user accounts. We also just began to use the reconciliation feature as it is now available for AD groups.
  • Very good integration with Active Directory
  • Tracking changes made in Active Directory
  • Approvals for access to different group memberships
  • Helps us to improve our processes
  • The emails generated could be improved, a little HTML or RTF goes a long way to readability
  • The UI was designed by a coder, would be better to have some usability testing done.
  • Better integration with non AD applications
  • It is a pain for users to now have to go through a process
  • Data owners aren't always available in a small company which makes urgent requests difficult.
  • The reconciliation is great at cleaning up privileges for users who shouldn't have them.
We looked at Okta, Sailpoint, and some others but they were cost prohibitive and we needed to slap something together quickly and these required a lot of planning before implementation. Planning is a good thing and would certainly have helped but I wasn't given the option of moving the launch date. Given those constraints, this was really the only option.

Do you think SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM)'s feature set?

Yes

Did SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) go as expected?

No

Would you buy SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) again?

Yes

SolarWinds Web Help Desk (WHD), CyberArk Privileged Account Security, Veeam Backup & Replication
I believe Solarwinds [Access Rights Manager (ARM)] is best designed for SMB. We looked at the leaders in Identity Access Management and were quoted big numbers and long timelines. We needed to have something up a running in a couple months without breaking the bank. This fit the bill and met most of the audit requests.

SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) Support

SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) Smart Start

ROI

  • Price
All the others we reviewed cost over 100k and required months of time for implementation. We needed something cheap that we could get running in a short window of time.

Using SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM)

120 - They are end users requesting permissions
1 - Windows admin
  • Audit requirements
  • Reconciliation of permissions at regular intervals
  • Ability to search for entitlements with descriptions
  • None I can think of
  • None I can think of
It is in place and working. No time or money to consider anything else.

Evaluating SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) and Competitors

More time and someone with experience with such software

SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) Implementation

It was my first exposure to this type of product and I wasn’t given the time to figure out how best to implement it. I would say get a plan together of what you are tying to accomplish first.
  • Implemented in-house
Change management was a major issue with the implementation
  • Non AD accounts
  • Understanding the documentation that was written when it was 8man

SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) Training

  • no training
As it was a new acquisition when we purchased it there was no training to speak of. I wouldn’t recommend what we did going in blind.

Configuring SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM)

To limited for non AD permissions
Get some training, even online videos
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
Some - we have added small pieces of custom code - Custom code was needed for Non AD permissions
None

SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) Support

ProsCons
None
Slow Resolution
Difficult to get immediate help
Slow Initial Response
Not sure. I suspect not considering the slow responses.
Yes - A bug with search was introduced in last build. It has been 4 months an it hasn’t been resolved. Took nearly two weeks for a response that it had been broken.
I honestly wish I could.
Very slow response times and sometimes I found the solution and ended up sharing it with support.

Using SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM)

ProsCons
None
Unnecessarily complex
Inconsistent
Cumbersome
Lots to learn
  • Selecting entitlements
  • Adding entitlements that are Active Directory integrated
  • Creating workflows
  • Any nonAD entitlements
  • Reconciliation now works but several data owners need lots of help
  • Entitlement search option has been broken in the latest release so users need to scroll though hundreds of entitlements to find the one they are requesting.
End user experience is much better than administration

SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) Reliability

No experience with this
On occasion the server will need to be restarted to get things running again.
Satisfactory performance

Integrating SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM)

Seems very difficult requiring good programming knowledge.
  • None
  • Jira
  • Confluence
  • Bitbucket
Only integrates with AD based permissions, not nonAD permissions
None
Make sure you have access to someone who can program.

Relationship with SolarWinds

When a sale is on the line things generally go smoothly
Average support
None
Take your time and don’t be in a rush

Upgrading SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM)

Yes - Upgrade went smoothly but search broke in the current release. A big deal for end users.
  • None
  • Search will work again