WSO2 Private CIAM Cloud delivers CIAM support for both B2B and B2C demands

As organizations expand their online presence, they are exploring new ways to reach more customers through partnerships. This is raising the stakes for enterprises to ensure a secure, frictionless customer experience (CX)—whether reaching these customers via business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B) models.

The new WSO2 Private CIAM Cloud, available now, addresses these demands with customer identity and access management (CIAM) functionality that goes beyond B2C to offer CIAM support for B2B scenarios.

WSO2 Private CIAM Cloud is part of WSO2’s CIAM suite, which also includes WSO2 Identity Server software that manages more than 1 billion identities each year.

WSO2 Private CIAM Cloud combines B2C capabilities of the WSO2 CIAM suite with B2B organization management functionality, which enables organizations to create multiple levels of B2B organizational hierarchies and lets administrators of each organization configure their own policies and processes.

WSO2 also introduced WSO2 Identity Server 6.0. Both the newest release of WSO2 Identity Server and the new WSO2 Private CIAM Cloud build on the current WSO2 CIAM suite to add new features.

These include integration with third-party analytics tools, integration with TypingDNA for authentication based on typing biometrics, multi-attribute log-in support to give users more sign-in options, and device flow support to bring CIAM to a broader range of devices.

“More than a quarter of our CIAM customer base has started using WSO2 Identity Server for B2B, which gave us valuable real-world insights into how to support enterprises’ increasingly sophisticated market requirements with our new WSO2 Private CIAM Cloud,” said Geethika Cooray, vice president and general manager of identity and access management at WSO2.

“With our expanded WSO2 CIAM suite, our customers have greater flexibility than ever to support their B2B and B2C scenarios, leverage business customers and partners to scale business models, broaden their market reach, and speed time to market—all while easily adapting their CX for distinct audiences to optimize user engagement.”, Cooray continued.

Recent research undertaken by WSO2 in the United Kingdom and Ireland (UK&I) examined how organizations are using CIAM platforms to deliver a more personalised experience. It found that 80% of respondents are using or planning to use a single platform for employees, partners, and suppliers as well as their customers.

“Organizations recognise that outside of the work environment, business users are also consumers who increasingly expect their digital experiences to be of the same high quality whether at home or at work. With WSO2 Private CIAM Cloud, we are closing the gap and enabling enterprises to bring a secure, frictionless experience to consumers and business users, alike,” said Ricardo Diniz, vice president and general manager for UK&I and Southern Europe.

Extending CIAM from B2C to B2B

“In 2021, Gartner observed an increase in inquiries about B2B, which surpassed B2C CIAM by 25%,” according to the Gartner IAM Leaders’ Guide to Access Management.

WSO2 Private CIAM Cloud supports the growing demand to extend CIAM from B2C to B2B by building on functionality already in use with WSO2 Identity Server, API-driven, cloud native product that enables developers to harness the power of CIAM without being security experts.

It incorporates the ability to federate, authenticate and manage identities; bridge across heterogeneous identity protocols; and secure access to web and mobile applications along with API-based endpoints.

Additionally, WSO2 Private CIAM Cloud goes beyond WSO2 Identity Server 6.0 to provide support for B2B business models through the new B2B organization management feature.

Unlike other CIAM products that are limited to simple organization management, the B2B organisation management handles complex nesting, which gives enterprises the flexibility to:

• Define as many organizations and multiple levels of sub-organizations as needed to represent large enterprise customers and their hierarchical organization structures, each of which get their own secure space for managing user identities and their access privileges.
• Define multi-level delegated administration policies for organizations, so they can manage their own user identities and access privileges.
• Enable each organization to manage its own role-based access controls to restrict access to its resources.
• Define organizations for intermediaries in distribution channels, such as resellers and distributors, and allow them to define their own security policies and operational workflows for customer onboarding, log-in, branding, and adaptive authentication to manage their enterprise customers.

“The needs of partners are somewhat distinct from consumers but equally important to the success of organizations already down the road in their digital transformation journeys,” said Jay Bretzmann, vice president of identity research at IDC.

“Built with ears to the development ground, WSO2 Private CIAM Cloud should help organizations delight partners in the same way it has enriched consumer user experiences, going beyond simple access to provide greater management capabilities and automation options.”, Bretzmann continued.

Enhancing users’ experiences

WSO2 Identity Server 6.0 and WSO2 Private CIAM Cloud both expand upon the WSO2 CIAM platform by adding a number of features aimed at enhancing the experiences of enterprises and their customers.

Greater analytics functionality for enterprise users. Both offerings include pre-configured integration with Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana (ELK) based analytics. Additionally, they can be integrated with other third-party analytics tools.

Typing biometric authentication via TypingDNA. Integration with TypingDNA enables organisations to leverage typing biometrics and offer customers seamless, user-friendly, risk-based authentication (RBA) that enhances security and fraud detection.

Multi-attribute login support. Enterprise can now make it easier and more convenient for users to sign into applications by letting them choose which attribute they want to use as their primary identifier, such as username, email address, or phone number.

Device flow support. The new feature expands the range of devices an organisation can use within the overall CX solution to include devices with limited input capabilities, such as smartphones and smart TVs.