Many organizations began using identity solutions for customers like what was used internally for managing employee identities, also known as workforce identity solutions. As digital interactions between customers and organizations began to accelerate, it became clear there needed to be purpose-built solutions to provide differentiated experiences for customers. For example, customer and workforce identities will have distinct use cases, differing identity-based outcomes, unique traffic patterns, and end-user experiences that can be vastly different. CIAM solutions typically have very different scale requirements, the number of users supported, than a workforce identity solution- a CIAM solution will often times require the ability to support thousands of authentication transactions per minute and millions of users.
A CIAM solution can have a great impact on turning an anonymous user into a long-term loyal customer. CIAM focuses on the capabilities that allow end users to interact and access applications, websites and services through a variety of digital channels including phones, computers, TVs, smart home devices, exercise equipment, and so on. Therefore organizations implementing CIAM solutions are often driven and motivated by different long-term outcomes compared to workforce identity solutions; especially delivering seamless, engaging, and delightful user experiences that can lead to maximizing revenue and fueling growth. In addition, an investment in a CIAM solution for your application can be critical for agility and innovation. A CIAM solution should offer rich APIs, modern authentication support, and differentiated ways to build an end-to-end customer relationship during the application development lifecycle.
Workforce identity focuses on the mechanism to control which employees have access to what enterprise resources. It allows employees to access the applications and data they need to do their job, with tools and policies to ensure employees only have the minimum access granted to perform their job functions. The lifecycle process of onboarding employees, vetting them, decommissioning them, and managing what they are entitled to access is tightly controlled by your IT, HR, and Security groups within the organization.