The Future of IAM: Insights from Google IAM, Keycloak, and Zitadel" ??

Identity and Access Management (IAM) ?? is essential for securing modern applications, enabling seamless authentication, authorization, and identity federation. Through extensive experience implementing IAM solutions with Google IAM and Keycloak, I've gained deep insights into their strengths and limitations. Recently, I discovered Zitadel, a promising Swiss startup ???? that has raised $9 million to develop a modern identity provider designed to address common IAM challenges effectively.

Google IAM Implementation at Talent4GIG

At Talent4GIG, I successfully implemented IAM using Google IAM, significantly enhancing authentication processes for individual users and enterprise clients. This involved integrating various social logins ??—such as Google Sign-In, Facebook, GitHub, and LinkedIn—to streamline user onboarding. Additionally, I facilitated enterprise federations through SAML 2.0 and OpenID Connect (OIDC), enabling seamless authentication via corporate credentials. Google's intuitive IAM capabilities simplified the configuration of fine-grained role-based access control (RBAC), ensuring precise permission management for distinct user roles like super admin, admin, manager, recruiter, and candidate. I also maintained high security standards by configuring service accounts with the principle of least privilege and extensively utilized Google Cloud Audit Logs ?? for compliance and monitoring purposes.

Keycloak Implementation at CSCS

At CSCS, my IAM responsibilities broadened considerably through extensive engagement with Keycloak. Keycloak served as our central identity management platform, authenticating researchers and staff across institutions such as ETH Zurich and external identity providers. Built upon JBoss, Keycloak effectively managed high authentication loads, efficiently generating JWT tokens ?? and processing approximately 50,000 authentication requests within a brief 2-3 minute period during load tests on a non-optimized TEST environment, showing minimal impact on memory usage and CPU load. Despite this performance advantage, Keycloak presented significant configuration and deployment challenges, particularly regarding Kubernetes integration ??, due to its complexity and limited documentation. Deploying it successfully required extensive troubleshooting and collaborative effort.

Keycloak was integrated with existing authentication systems like LDAP and Kerberos, facilitating comprehensive identity federation. To ensure system resilience, I configured high availability setups using Keep Alive and Keycloak's distributed caching ???. Additionally, I created customized onboarding workflows, implemented One-Time Password (OTP) solutions ?? for enhanced security, and supported a secure SSH service allowing users to generate temporary SSH keys via a dedicated web interface. We managed multiple deployment environments (TEST, DEV, PROD) to maintain consistent and reliable IAM configurations.

Comparative Analysis

While Google IAM offered intuitive management and ease of use, Keycloak highlighted several operational complexities, especially regarding Kubernetes deployments, authentication flows, and user schema management. Keycloak's lack of native automation for event-driven tasks and its decentralized authorization approach posed challenges, as authorization decisions were managed separately within each connected application, significantly complicating user onboarding and role management. Additionally, support from Red Hat was often inconsistent and occasionally slow, further increasing operational complexity. Maintaining alignment between the TEST and production environments with Keycloak proved challenging due to the absence of infrastructure-as-code frameworks, causing configuration drift.

Zitadel Exploration

I haven't yet worked extensively with Zitadel, so my perspective is primarily based on exploring their website, reviewing their documentation, and examining their open roadmap. However, what impresses me most about Zitadel is how straightforward it is to set up and run an instance, supported by an intuitive graphical user interface and detailed video tutorials ??. Additionally, Zitadel appears to offer Terraform support, effectively addressing a significant limitation of Keycloak. Zitadel further distinguishes itself through user-friendly benefits, such as providing a free hosted instance in the US ???? accessible simply by registering on their website. Its graphical interface simplifies tasks like customizing login forms ??, color palettes, and branding—processes that are cumbersome in Keycloak due to its reliance on an outdated templating system and completely lacking in Google IAM.

Regarding community support, Keycloak boasts over 1200 contributors, though only around 10 are actively involved in its ongoing development. In comparison, Zitadel currently has approximately 100 contributors, with a similar number actively participating.

A particularly noteworthy feature distinguishing Zitadel from Keycloak (Keycloak requires several steps including a non-easy to setup browser flow) is its robust support for passwordless authentication through the Passkeys feature ??. This functionality enables users to securely authenticate using biometrics such as fingerprints or facial recognition, security keys, and other WebAuthn-compatible methods, significantly enhancing security and user experience.

Another strength is Zitadel's transparency and structured communication ??, as evidenced by their publicly accessible roadmap on GitHub. To improve clarity and strategic alignment further, I recommend grouping roadmap epics into broader, strategic categories such as:

• Advanced User Management Differentiators ????
• Performance & Scalability Differentiators ??
• Comprehensive Analytics & Reporting Differentiators ??
• Security & Compliance Differentiators ??
• Developer Experience Differentiators ???
• Integration & Ecosystem Differentiators ??

Additionally, it would be beneficial if Zitadel could consider providing a glimpse into their long-term roadmap, recognizing understandable competitive considerations.

Product Vision for Zitadel

From a product management perspective, I envision Zitadel further enhancing its competitive edge by implementing these differentiated features, aligning them with current and future IAM market demands:

Advanced User Management Differentiators ????:

• AI-powered anomaly detection for unusual login activities, helping organizations proactively secure their systems as IAM threats evolve.
• Predictive access control recommendations for revoking unused permissions, reducing security risks and ensuring compliance with least privilege principles.
• Automated detection and deactivation of inactive accounts, improving security hygiene and minimizing attack surfaces.
• Dynamic user segmentation and role recommendations based on behavioral analytics, streamlining access management at scale.

Performance & Scalability Differentiators ??:

• GitOps and Terraform-based infrastructure management to enhance deployment efficiency and support enterprise scalability needs.
• Seamless Kubernetes integration with documented best practices, ensuring IAM solutions are cloud-native and easily adaptable to modern architectures.
• Horizontally scalable multi-region deployments, allowing organizations to distribute authentication workloads efficiently and ensure high availability.

Comprehensive Analytics & Reporting Differentiators ??:

• Detailed dashboards for authentication metrics, security incidents, and real-time operational monitoring, providing insights necessary for proactive security and system performance management.
• Customizable reporting with AI-driven anomaly detection, offering predictive insights into potential threats before they escalate.
• Real-time monitoring of authorization decisions to track access patterns and detect unusual behavior.

Security & Compliance Differentiators ??:

• Enterprise-grade Passkey synchronization solutions independent of cloud-based keychains, addressing the needs of organizations with strict security and compliance requirements.
• Detailed event tracking and automated compliance reporting, enabling organizations to meet evolving regulatory requirements with minimal overhead.
• Integrated Zero Trust framework support, helping enterprises enforce identity-based security policies at every level.
• AI-assisted risk-based authentication, dynamically adjusting authentication requirements based on user behavior and security context.

Developer Experience Differentiators ???:

• Intuitive APIs, comprehensive documentation, and interactive guides, making it easier for developers to integrate IAM solutions seamlessly.
• Low-code/no-code policy and access rule configuration, reducing engineering overhead while maintaining security best practices.
• SDKs and pre-built connectors for seamless integration with major enterprise platforms and cloud providers.

Integration & Ecosystem Differentiators ??:

• No-code/low-code event-driven integration via webhooks and plugins based on Google's Zanzibar model, empowering organizations to implement scalable and flexible authorization models without complex custom development.
• Marketplace for IAM extensions and third-party integrations, enabling companies to enhance their IAM capabilities without extensive in-house development.
• Identity orchestration framework to streamline multi-IDP and cross-platform authentication flows.

By focusing on these differentiators, Zitadel can position itself as an IAM leader, addressing modern security, compliance, and scalability challenges while offering an intuitive developer and enterprise-friendly experience. Zitadel should establish itself as a cutting-edge, highly advanced IAM solution that remains open like Keycloak, while incorporating key usability and automation features from Google IAM to provide a more seamless and enterprise-ready IAM experience. Additionally, with evolving market demands, Zitadel has the opportunity to expand its ecosystem by investing in AI-driven identity security, seamless multi-cloud support, and adaptive access control strategies tailored for enterprise-scale deployments.

__Disclaimer: This text was personally written by Nicola, leveraging professional experiences, original ideas, and insights. ChatGPT was used to enhance clarity, readability, coherence, and to generate relevant icons to improve visual readability, but the substance, analysis, and strategic perspectives presented here remain entirely Nicola's own.