Identity management is a critical platform component. External users on mobile apps need to be authenticated, developers need to be given access to delivery infrastructure components, and microservices may need to identify themselves to other microservices. You should ask yourself whether identity management should be “self-hosted”. In our experience, a hosted identity management as a service (SaaS) solution is preferable. We believe that top-tier hosted providers such as Auth0 and Okta can provide better uptime and security SLAs. That said, sometimes self-hosting the solution is a realistic decision, especially for enterprises that have the operational discipline and resources to do so safely. Large enterprise identity solutions typically offer a much more expansive range of capabilities such as centralized entitlements, governance reporting and separation of duties management among others. However, these concerns are typically more relevant for employee identities, especially in regulated enterprises with legacy systems.
