An active year for investment activity in IAM: Perspective on One Identity’s acquisition of OneLogin

On October 4, 2021, identity and access management (IAM) vendor One Identity announced plans to acquire identity-as-a-service (IDaaS) vendor OneLogin for an undisclosed amount. Founded in 2009, OneLogin is an established pure-play IDaaS vendor that primarily serves midmarket enterprises, with a unified platform for employees, partners, and customers, and has raised over $170 million in venture financing. Forrester estimates this purchase price was likely in the $400 million to $600 million range. 

The OneLogin acquisition is the latest event in what has been a very active year for investment activity in IAM, ranging from Okta’s acquisition of Auth0, the Thycotic/Centrify merger, and ForgeRock’s recent IPO. 

While OneLogin emerged as a strong IDaaS player for enterprise use cases, the success of this merger will depend on the following:  

• How well One Identity can scale up software as a service (SaaS)-specific expertise. While One Identity is an established IAM vendor with a broad product portfolio, its portfolio has favored on-premises deployments with its SaaS offerings, following more of a lift-and-shift approach. Bringing OneLogin into the fold gives One Identity a strong SaaS offering, but it is a new delivery mechanism for One Identity. This means that One Identity will need to scale and build up the necessary skill sets to support SaaS deployments to ensure success.  

• How effectively One Identity can compete in the highly competitive IDaaS market. While OneLogin has had a strong IDaaS offering, its customer adoption has lagged that of vendors such as Microsoft, Okta, and Ping Identity. One Identity has generally competed with other on-premises IAM vendors such as CyberArk, IBM, and SailPoint. With this acquisition, One Identity will now be competing against much more formidable IAM vendors. As the IDaaS market continues to mature, succeeding will require significant marketing and R&D investments to remain relevant.  

• How successfully One Identity can integrate the OneLogin IDaaS platform. One Identity’s portfolio has generally focused on identity management and governance (IMG) and privileged identity management (PIM). Adding the OneLogin IDaaS platform into the mix allows One Identity to differentiate its offerings against other IDaaS vendors that lack native PIM or IMG capabilities. The One Identity/OneLogin combination now most closely resembles the CyberArk/Idaptive IAM portfolio, so building a compelling integration and go-to-market approach for the One Identity/OneLogin combination will be something to watch over the next 12 months.   

• How successfully One Identity can retain engineering, professional service, and support talent. The success of the OneLogin acquisition largely depends on One Identity’s ability to retain OneLogin’s marketing and technical talent (product development, professional services, and support) to 1) provide a smooth experience for legacy customers of the acquired vendor, 2) cross-sell and upsell from the acquirer’s legacy portfolio, and 3) acquire and retain new customers. One Identity’s past integration efforts have been mixed. Its January 2018 acquisition of Balabit was an excellent strategic choice, but there were some mentions of challenges with the integration effort and staffing turnover. Addressing these problems will ensure that One Identity is able to leverage maximum value and success from the OneLogin acquisition.

This post was written by Vice President, Research Director Merritt Maxim and it originally appeared here.