Why Cloud Identity matters?

A long time friend of mine recently moved to Seattle, and we decided to meet for dinner. It's been about a year or so since we last met so we had a lot to catch up on. One of the things he asked me was about my new job with "Azure Identity" which triggered a lengthy discussion on why cloud identity matters and how it adds value, hence the epiphany that I should write this article.

You might be wondering what "Cloud Identity" is. In layman's words - It's a way of managing users' identity in cloud such that it is fully separated out of an application offering a particular service. Separating user identity management out of application helps application developers to concentrate more on building their core business offerings than worrying about building and managing over-complicated user identity. Multiple applications offering different services can cater to the same user by tapping into existing identity knowledge of the user pool rather than building their own identity knowledge of their user pool.

Not quite layman's words yet? OK, let me retry with an example!

Let's say I have this idea about a technology that converts selfie photos of boring stressed out faces into cheerful photos. I go about building an app which people can download on their iPhone, use basic features of taking a selfie that converts a boring face to cheerful face for free, users can also pay for daily subscriptions for advanced features that includes cloud storage and recovery, convenient photo sharing services with friends and family etc.

OK, that sounds like a great idea. Why do I need 'Cloud Identity' service provider again?

For any technology business to be successful one has to get 4 things absolutely right and in this order: Channel, Targeting, Creativity, and Functionality. (slightly off topic: Most of my engineer friends might be wondering should it not be "Functionality" or technology first? My MBA courses have helped frame my business acumen where I have learnt and realized functionality or technology is the essential part for a business to work. Period. No doubt in that. But for building a sustainable, scale-able, successful business, more than functionality you have to first get the Channel right , then get the Targeting right and then Creativity right, and then get a rock solid reliable Functionality).

What do I mean by Channel? I have built this great technology that converts a selfie of boring face into a cheerful photo. Suppose I now decide to use website as my Channel to publish this technology to the world. Do you expect I would get lot of customers? How many would use a website to upload a boring photo to get back a magical cheerful photo? What if I used an Android app as my Channel to launch this technology in the Silicon Valley where more than 90% people have iPhone. Or, as an iPhone app in India where more than 90% people have an Android phone? What if I used kiosk machines in malls or cinemas as my Channel for this technology? What if I offered this as a B2B service that other businesses or app developers can integrate into their services? You now get the point! Getting Channel right is very important in how I deliver my awesome technology to my customers, and the business success I can generate.

What do I mean by Targeting? Let's assume through market research and experimentation I have figured out that building an iPhone app is the right Channel for my product. Now comes the Targeting. Do I spend money on advertisement and other things to acquire and engage all users who have an iPhone? All users would then include kids, teens, youths, mid age people, seniors, male, female, artists, professionals, etc. basically users with all interests, professions and demography. This will lead to low returns on my investments, low app ratings, bad reviews, etc. I will have a great technology but terrible product-market fit. What if I target teens as they are the one who sends most selfies? Would they need a technology to convert their already cheerful teen life? Would I target mid age stressed out working professionals? Targeting "everyone" is not a business strategy that will only confuse the business and derail our focus. Getting Targeting right is very important in deciding whom I deliver my awesome technology to, and the business success I can generate.

Similar to Channel and Targeting, I have to get Creativity right on how I present my technology within the app, in an intuitive way, bringing customer delight, personification, customization, use of gamification concepts to keep my users engaged, etc. To sum up, I need to get Channel, Targeting, Creativity and Functionality right to build a sustainable, scale-able, successful, technology business.

So all this is great, but again what role does Cloud Identity have in all this?

Cloud Identity services help app developers (or enterprises) get Targeting right. To get targeting right, app developers have to know who came through the gate (aka user authentication) provided by the sign-up/sign-in of the cloud identity service provider and have to know a lot about the user like profile information, demography information, interests, places etc (aka user graph). Cloud Identity providers like Microsoft, Google, Okta, Facebook and many more provide user graphs that app developers (or enterprises) can use to know everything about the user from day-1 to do better targeting than investing heavily building their own identity knowledge graph for their user from ground up consuming long time and money, while they can concentrate on building their core skill of developing the technology of "converting boring faces to cheerful photos".

There are mainly 2 types of offerings in the Cloud Identity space.

1. First one is from Social IDPs (Identity Provider) companies like Google, Facebook etc where the user graph is owned by them and they build the graph through their multiple social network services. App developers (or enterprises) can build on top of IDPs to get instant access to the rich user graph, and outsource maintenance of security, reliability, and effective user authentication to IDPs who are better at doing these things than the individual app developers (or enterprises) thus to avoid time deviating from their core skills of "converting boring faces to cheerful photos"
2. Second one is from Enterprise IDPs (Identity Provider) companies like Microsoft, Okta etc where the user graph is owned by app developers (or enterprises) and app developers (or enterprises) build the graph through their multiple services. IDPs provide the identity management software as a service to app developers (or enterprises) for them to make use of IDPs expertise in building and managing user graph effectively. This also enables a new app or service within the enterprise to quickly go to production as they can just build on top of its enterprise's existing user pool that IDPs have done a good job separating out from other apps and services, to get instant access to the rich user graph, and outsource maintenance of security, reliability, and effective user authentication to IDPs who are better at doing these things than the individual app developers (or enterprises) thus to avoid time deviating from their core skills of "converting boring faces to cheerful photos". Enterprise IDPs offering often has 3 more parts. Firstly large enterprises using IDPs to manage identities of their own employees, secondly enterprises using IDPs to manage identities of their supply chain partners, and thirdly enterprises using IDPs to manage identities of their customers.

So in all the above cases as an Identity PM, my customers are the app developers and my product is my knowledge about the users and the ability to connect an app to users. Thus my work plays a vital role in helping business get their targeting right, which is the 2nd most important factor for app developers (or enterprises) in creating a sustainable, scale-able, successful business.

You still have questions about Why Cloud Identity matters? Feel free to leave a comment below to engage me further!

Disclaimer: Views and opinions expressed in this article are solely my own that my good mentors @BenVincent and @AnkurPatel have helped shape but necessarily do not express the views or opinions of my employer (Microsoft).