Using identity to reduce the burden of managing SaaS sprawl

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions can be a huge improvement over traditional IT solutions in many ways, from cost and scalability to easier deployment and maintenance. Those benefits (and others) are helping to drive rapid growth in the SaaS market, which is projected by Gartner to top 16% in 2023.

But with that growth of SaaS services in the enterprise also comes something else: SaaS sprawl. Organizations benefiting from using multiple SaaS solutions are also finding it harder to manage their diverse collections of resources and services. Specifically, finding consistent ways to both integrate and protect access to multiple SaaS solutions is a critical challenge facing many companies.

To be effective and efficient, an organization’s growing digital ecosystem of applications and data must be more interconnected and protected.

One way to do that is by automating business processes with no code workflows within SailPoint Identity Security Cloud that embed identity security throughout the enterprise. Specifically, identity can be used as the central hub to connect and secure access to cloud-based services across an organization’s entire digital ecosystem.

SailPoint SaaS Workflows makes it easier to quickly create automated workflows to embed identity security across the business. SailPoint SaaS Workflows provides a graphical drag-and-drop interface allowing organizations to integrate identity security across cloud-based services through simplified but powerful automation. Combining identity management with automated workflows makes it possible to accelerate innovation while decreasing IT overhead and freeing up IT teams to focus on high-value initiatives.

SailPoint SaaS Workflows enables organizations to ensure compliance and security across multiple SaaS platforms for standard business processes such as deactivating all accounts when a user leaves, generating automated certification campaigns, or removing access in the case of unauthorized access. The solution provides automated workflow control via a no-code interface that enables users to set up triggers to kick off a defined workflow for any business process, such as when an identity is created or deleted, or an access request is submitted.

We recently spoke to Prince Jones, Senior Manager of Identity Security, at Trane Technologies about his experience with SailPoint SaaS Workflows.

“Workflows are a game changer for us because it allows us to deploy extensible identity orchestration using smart logic in a supported manner and since much of the functionality is out-the-box ready, we’re able to innovate faster with fewer scripts. We have 10 enabled so far with a few more in development and they have fired and completed a process over 12,000 times from helping to automate the conversion of a Contractor to an Employee, removing Guest Access from our system if their sponsor leaves the company, or even letting us know when a Source has been updated to help us reach our compliance objectives.”

So far, the alternative for most organizations has been to manually attempt to do this type of business process management. Unfortunately, that burdens IT resources, creates security and compliance gaps, cannot scale as new SaaS platforms are added, and can generate increased costs. Unless SaaS identity workflows are automated, IT teams will be burdened with repetitive tasks and struggle to keep up with the speed and scale needed. Manual approaches to developing and managing these business processes will face higher costs and reduced productivity.

Since SailPoint SaaS Workflows provides a drag-and-drop visual workflow designer, non-technical business users can tailor workflows to fit their business needs. The graphical interface is more efficient than manual approaches and offers deeper insights and control over user access lifecycles. The solution streamlines the creation of cloud-based services integrations via a toolkit of event triggers, which can initiate automated processes across the business.

The solution is ideal for situations where organizations need to automate exception processes or identity processes that require additional logic, parsing, complex approvals, out-of-band requests and more. Workflows can be started by triggers (such as a new user being created) or by calls from other applications. The solution is designed to dynamically scale as needed.

Workflows allows organizations to create automated, no-code workflows that connect to an almost unlimited number of external applications and platforms, providing more scalability than manual approaches and enabling tailor-made solutions for unique requirements.

SailPoint SaaS Workflows enables organizations to:

• reduce the burden of managing SaaS sprawl,
• ensure that nothing falls through the cracks,
• use a drag-and-drop visual interface to automate business processes across applications and systems, and
• securely manage identities significantly faster than a manual, human-based approach.

“We see that SailPoint is focusing on features that matter, like SaaS Workflows. We were one of the early open beta testers. So fast we had 10+ workflows in production, with many more in development. We want to extract the value out of the platform. It allows us to do things like not write complex scripts that we have to keep on a server and monitor etc. We want to defer operational challenges where we can to the vendor,” says Jones.

SaaS solutions are quickly becoming the heart of many organizations’ IT infrastructure. They provide too many business and technical benefits to ignore and can be a compelling approach for companies that want greater agility, reduced costs, and increased functionality. But those benefits can be lost when organizations manually try to manage business workflows and identities across SaaS platforms. That’s why any organization with one or more SaaS platforms should make sure to evaluate SaaS-oriented visual workflow and automated identity management solutions such as SailPoint SaaS Workflows if it wants to reap the optimal value, agility, and security from its SaaS solutions.

To learn more, visit the SailPoint SaaS Workflows website.