Final week, Thales introduced that it had the signature of an settlement to accumulate OneWelcome, a European chief within the fast-growing market of buyer identification and entry administration (CIAM), for a complete consideration of €100 million. Thales goals to capitalize on OneWelcome’s robust cloud-native software-as-a-service (SaaS) product by extending its market footprint past Europe and promoting it to present Thales shoppers in North America and the Asia-Pacific area.
Complementary Identification Acquisition
OneWelcome’s robust digital identification life-cycle administration capabilities will complement Thales’s present identification companies (safe credential enrollment, issuance and administration, know your buyer and so forth.). With this acquisition, Thales will be capable to present an expanded identification platform that may:
- Be accessible to organizations of all sizes to handle inner and exterior identities
- Shortly deliver new companies on-line
- Enhance operational effectivity and buyer expertise
- Meet or exceed regulatory compliance necessities
It does appear like CIAM is disappearing as a stand-alone pillar and is changing into a significant pillar inside bigger distributors increasing cybersecurity portfolios. Along with Thales’ acquisition of OneWelcome, different notable ones embody:
- Ping Identification acquired Unbound ID in 2016.
- SAP purchased Gigya for $350 million in 2017.
- Akamai acquired Janrain in 2019.
CIAM of Curiosity to Expertise Distributors in Varied Sectors
It is fascinating that these acquisitions do not comply with a sample. Thales is arguably the most important vendor in information safety with its encryption capabilities. Ping was already a big participant in enterprise identification administration/IDaaS earlier than it added CIAM, and SAP, in fact, has an enormous enterprise useful resource planning (ERP) and buyer relationship administration (CRM) enterprise. And Akamai is a content material supply community (CDN) that has been increasing its safety choices for the very best a part of a decade.
What they’ve in widespread, nonetheless, is that the acquirers all serve enterprise prospects who take care of massive numbers of consumers within the client market and their interactions with them have moved more and more on-line, making CIAM a significant a part of their safety toolkit. Consider CIAM because the place the place identification administration (IAM and IDaaS) meets CRM, enabling customers to entry on-line sources and studying from their behaviors to enhance their expertise and, hopefully, to drive extra gross sales.
Information Safety and CIAM Convergence
Thales is a significant participant within the information safety house and the acquisition of OneWelcome helps it develop its identification portfolio.
It does appear that an growing variety of distributors are desirous to play within the identification house. Solely final month, Microsoft expanded its capabilities in identification with the launch of Entra. The nice progress potential of CIAM and clamor by huge distributors to enter this house may help to elucidate why Omdia tasks this market to extend from $8.1 billion in 2021 to $16.7 billion in 2026.
