Survey Shows: SAAS Vendors Ditch User Names And Passwords, Adopt SAML In Droves

by Thomas Pedersen, co-founder and CEO of OneLogin

Looks like we were on to something when we open sourced OneLogin’s first SAML Toolkit three years ago — theOneLogin 2014 State of SaaS Identity Management survey that we just completed with CSA shows that SaaS vendors are adopting SAML in droves. Of the 100 participants that completed the survey, 97 percent are backing the SAML standard for single sign-on into cloud application environments, many in response to customers asking for an easier, faster and more secure path to identity management and app provisioning.

We all know the headaches that enterprise IT managers face trying to keep up with their businesses’ demand for cloud apps while also maintaining security and compliance. SAML is now the Gold Standard for signing into cloud applications. Why? It completely eliminates all passwords and instead uses digital signatures to establish trust between the identity provider and the application. SAML-enabled SaaS applications deliver faster and more secure user provisioning in complex enterprise environments, and help simplify identity management across large and diverse user communities. Other key insights from the survey:

• SAML in wide use for single sign-on: 67 percent of the SaaS vendors surveyed use SAML today for single sign-on identity management, while 19 percent said they planned to implement SAML within the next 12 months. Only 3 percent had no plans to implement the standard.
• Customer demand, security and speed drive adoption: 26 percent of survey respondents cited demand from existing customers as the primary driver behind their SAML adoption, 21 percent cited improved security and compliance, and nearly 22 percent cited quick integration into cloud application ecosystems.
• SAML adoption not limited to the web browser: 37 percent of the SaaS vendors surveyed leverage SAML on mobile versions of their apps, and 25 percent use SAML for desktop applications not including a web browser.

These findings speak volumes: SAML is stronger than ever and its momentum is fueled by the realization that the standard provides a massive security boost by enabling enterprises to more easily control access to their sensitive data. This is why OneLogin’s cloud solution for single sign-on and enterprise identity management is pre-integrated via SAML with more than 350 top enterprise applications, and why more than 150 SaaS vendors, including Dropbox, have used OneLogin’s free open source SAML Toolkits to SAML-enable their apps. Many thanks to CSA for collaborating with us on this survey, and we look forward to spreading the SAML gospel this week at RSA.

Thomas Pedersen is co-founder and CEO of OneLogin, the innovator in cloud-based enterprise identity management, ranked #1 inNetwork World Magazine’s review of SSO tools. Follow him on Twitter @thomasbpedersen