What Is Directory as a Service? (DaaS)

Directory services are a critical part of any organization’s enterprise infrastructure. They are relied upon for authentication and authorization and serve as a system of record that defines every identity object held within them. From the CIAM perspective, there is no better place to store information about customers, their preferences, and their consents than in a directory.

At its core, directory as a service (DaaS) is closely related to its on-premises cousin, the LDAP directory. Examples of LDAP directories are PingDirectory, Active Directory™, Open LDAP, or any other directory service an organization uses to store user information. DaaS systems integrate with your systems differently than their cousins in the data center. Let’s look at some of the benefits of DaaS systems.

Scalability

This is usually one of the first concepts that comes to mind when considering any service-architected offering. A DaaS should be highly scalable, adjusting capacity as needed during operations. In workforce and CIAM use cases, access to the backend directory ebbs and flows in a fairly predictable rhythm.

For the workforce use case, open enrollment periods, tax season, and employee reviews cause workers to log into the portal, which means the backend directory gets extra attention. This is in addition to the regular directory service traffic from source systems related to add, modify, and delete operations.

In the CIAM use case, scaling is essential to manage increases in load associated with customer-oriented events such as sales and special events.

Cloud connectivity

More and more applications offer cloud-first architectures through services such as APIs, SDKs, and SCIM-based connections. Connections are more efficient and secure when executed from cloud to cloud because they are well encrypted and use more direct links.

Reliability

All organizations have some sort of high-availability/disaster recovery plan, and while cloud services can go down, properly architected cloud solutions offer excellent strategies. Ping creates highly available services when using multiple operating regions and zones. With the mature cloud services today, organizations can easily create reliable systems that are secure and compliant solutions.

It is essential for architects to consider all aspects of the directory services that will be used as a part of their overall solution.  DaaS services such as PingOne Directory deliver this functionality and serve the above requirements in a superior fashion.