Avatier vs. NetIQ: Comparing Identity and Access Solutions

IT staff is facing an increasingly complex digital landscape where it’s necessary to maintain high security while balancing wide-reaching digital access.

There’s a mixed environment of local servers, clouds, and third-party hosts combined with multiple access points from workstations, remote access, and mobile device. Scale these access dynamics across your company to understand the complex web of Identity and Access Management (IAM) in your business.

Without the right security tools in place, this complexity could leave a business vulnerable to unauthorized user access. It’s critical, of course, to secure these access points from malicious attempts by unknown third parties. However, effective IAM implementation can help you fortify your overall security by addressing vulnerabilities such as former employees retaining access after they’ve left or the risks of bring-your-own-device policies.

As Gartner research director, Kevin Kampman, explains, “As organizational IAM needs are expanding and diversifying, formal IAM programs are becoming a necessity.”

To help you decide which is the best IAM provider for your business, consider two leading providers of IAM solutions: Avatier and NetIQ, which is a subsidiary of Micro Focus. NetIQ offers a few different products, including security management and data center management. However, for the sake of comparison, let’s focus on IAM services to see how NetIQ and Avatier stack up.

Avatier vs. NetIQ: IAM Functionality and Infrastructure

Avatier and NetIQ both offer a rich set of identity and access tools.

Each offers single-sign-on (SSO) to streamline the user login process and create a single password-protected access point for multiple applications. Both offer lifecycle management tools to automate provisioning and remove the risk associated with excessive or out-of-date privileges. Both offer access governance tools to help you understand company-wide application usage and achieve compliance through visibility and automation. Both IAM providers offer password management tools that provide self-service password resets, which can reduce business costs by eliminating the 30 percent of support calls that involve unlock requests.  

While the availability of these tools from both Avatier and NetIQ may give the appearance that the two platforms are similar, the behind-the-scenes infrastructures of the two platforms are significantly different and can have significant implications for IT implementation.

Even though NetIQ offers IAM solutions for cloud and on-site applications, the IAM solution runs from within your on-site IT infrastructure and is therefore not a true IDaaS (Identity as a Service). This means that NetIQ doesn’t have the same implementation flexibility, cost savings, and continuous delivery advantages of IDaaS.

On the other hand, Avatier is an innovative solution that combines the best parts of IDaaS and traditional IAM tools. With the world’s first Identity-as-a-Container (IDaaC) platform, users have the benefits of container technology applied to IAM tools.

With Avatier Identity Anywhere, the Dockers Container technology gives you complete IAM portability while avoiding the small environment differences that can cause deployment issues, stability problems, or security risks. Additionally, containerization allows for much higher density (20x) as compared to traditional virtual machines from VMware and Microsoft.

Avatier has been named an Innovation Leader by a KuppingerCole analysis of IDaaS. With our new release of the world’s first Identity-as-a-Container (IDaaC) platform, we can help you stay on the cutting edge of IAM security.

Avatier vs. NetIQ: Reviews

To understand what the user experiences of Avatier and NetIQ are like, look at reviews for the two platforms.

On Capterra, both Avatier and NetIQ have strong ratings with five stars overall. While Avatier consistently scored five stars in all categories, NetIQ scored four out of five for ease of use and 4.5 out of five in customer service.

On Gartner, Avatier’s IAM platform has an overall rating of 4.3 stars, while NetIQ has a 3.7 rating. In some categories, Avatier greatly outperforms NetIQ by more than 20 percent in the ratings. These are auditing, reporting and analytics, access certification, quality of technical support, and policy and role management.

Avatier vs. NetIQ: Cost

NetIQ doesn’t list pricing on its website. However, it does list a three-step licensing process that combines a base license per enterprise plus add-ons per device, server, or enterprise, and then a discount calculation based on commitment and total spending.

If you find it confusing, you’re not alone. Five years ago, NetIQ’s current parent company Micro Focus settled a legal dispute with the New South Wales police and governmental agencies. The company was suing for AU$12 million in unpaid license fees, but the agencies believed they had unlimited use.

We can’t predict what using NetIQ would cost your business because it’ll vary based on the number or types of licenses you need.

However, we can tell you that Avatier’s pricing is an easy set of à la carte IAM solutions. All of our IDaaC services are priced per user per month. You can select from four IAM tools: access governance for $3 per month per user, SSO for $2, lifecycle management for $5, and password management for $1.50. Prices are straightforward, so it’s easy to predict what your costs will be.

Moreover, there are discounts for volume users, educational institutions, and non-hosted users. Avatier users also have access to a built-in cost savings calculator, so you can easily determine your ROI.

Avatier vs. NetIQ: Conclusion

While Avatier and NetIQ both provide solutions for Identity and Access Management, NetIQ’s solutions are a combination of on-site and cloud deployment.

Avatier’s world’s first Identity as a Container (IDaaC) is on the cutting edge of portable IAM deployment. With Identity Anywhere, a single IAM solution can be deployed across any environment, including local servers, on an Avatier cloud, or with any cloud provider. This flexibility provides ease of implementation across your current tech landscape, while also future-proofing your enterprise so your IAM can adjust to changing business technologies. Identity Anywhere reduces the surface of your cybersecurity vulnerability and runs at a 20x density compared to traditional machines.

Additionally, Avatier scored higher reviews than NetIQ on Gartner and in some Capterra categories. The pricing models are upfront and straightforward, providing you maximum security and flexibility at the lowest total cost of ownership in the industry. Learn more about how Avatier can help your digital security.