What we should really be asking when we attempt to define Centrify’s now defunct role is more of a question about the right approach to identity management in the cloud era. Idaptive, on the other hand, looks to follow the traditional first generation IDaaS path that has been paved by companies such as Okta and OneLogin. It seems as though the current incarnation of Centrify will keep the privileged access management components (Linux and network infrastructure authentication). Centrify was essentially an add-on to on-prem Active Directory infrastructure. Previously, the Centrify Express product extended legacy, on-prem Microsoft Active Directory identities to non-Windows resources such as Mac and Linux systems as well as web applications. We use the past tense to say that Centrify was an identity bridge because the product recently faced EOL, and Centrify split into two companies- Idaptive and Centrify. In short, Centrify was an identity bridge. In web searches targeted at discovering a way to extend AD, Centrify comes up quite a bit, so it’s important to understand what their product does.
With IT organizations looking to connect their non-Windows resources to Microsoft Active Directory, one question comes up quite often: what is Centrify?