Kudos to Gigya! The eleven year old company that staked its success on “Customer Identity and Acceses Management” (CIAM), has been acquired by SAP, one of the largest providers of business software on the planet, for a reported – though not confirmed – $350 million. When the merger is complete, Gigya’s suite of CIAM services, which currently manage 1.3 billion registered customer identities addresses across geographies, will be integrated into the SAP Hybris portfolio of E-Commerce software.

Digital giants such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft have long recognized the need for simple Identity and Access Management (IAM) in the name of greater security. Gigya, along with a handful of competitors including Ping Identity and Janrain, recognized that simple, strong authentication is better thought of as part of the User Experience (UX) domain and fashioned them to ease each customer’s journey across multiple channels and devices. Hybris is the solution stack which includes a full suite of Marketing and E-Commerce capabilities, including the resources that support chatbots and virtual agents.

With “Gigya Inside”, SAP is well-positioned to move IAM beyond its traditional confines, where it serves as gatekeeper, separating employees from customers and other stakeholders such as vendors and partners. It will support the need for agile, friction-free, yet secure, log-ins.

The acquisition is also a response to stricter regulations such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the updated Payment Services Directive (PSD2). Both mandate much more stringent control of access to individuals’ personal data and personally identifiable information (PII). If simple methods for ID registration and log-in are baked into core IT resources, it improves the user experience noticeably. As Intelligent Assistants, chatbots, “Voice First” virtual agents and digital employees proliferate, simplicity for both enrollment and authentication is a must. Opus Research calls it “Intelligent Authentication” (#IAuth) and sees SAP’s acquisition, integration and ultimate assimilation as validation of the approach.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Authentication, Articles