Top 7 Identity Fabric Solutions in 2026

Identity fabric is an architectural concept introduced by Gartner that describes a set of identity tools, services, and practices woven together to support distributed, multi-cloud, and hybrid environments. Rather than relying on a single monolithic identity platform, an identity fabric allows organizations to compose identity services from multiple vendors and technologies, unified by orchestration, shared policy, and consistent governance.

The need for identity fabric has grown from a simple reality: most enterprises do not have a single identity platform. They have Active Directory alongside Microsoft Entra, Okta for cloud SSO, a separate CIAM platform for customers, CyberArk for privileged access, SailPoint or Saviynt for governance, and legacy identity systems that cannot be easily replaced. An identity fabric connects these disparate systems into a cohesive whole, providing consistent policy enforcement, unified lifecycle management, and centralized visibility regardless of where identities are managed.

This guide examines seven solutions that contribute to or enable identity fabric architectures.

Core Components of an Identity Fabric

An identity fabric typically consists of several layers:

• Identity Orchestration: A central engine that coordinates authentication, authorization, and lifecycle workflows across multiple identity systems.
• Universal Policy Engine: Consistent access policies that are evaluated regardless of which identity provider or application is involved.
• Identity Governance: Centralized visibility into access entitlements, certification campaigns, and compliance reporting spanning all connected identity systems.
• Protocol Translation: The ability to bridge different identity protocols (SAML, OIDC, OAuth, Kerberos, header-based) and mediate between legacy and modern systems.
• Analytics and Intelligence: Unified identity analytics that correlate events across all identity systems to detect threats and optimize access.

1. Ping Identity

Ping Identity's contribution to identity fabric architecture centers on PingOne DaVinci, its no-code identity orchestration engine, and PingFederate, its enterprise federation server. Together, they provide the orchestration and protocol translation layers that are fundamental to an identity fabric.

Key Capabilities

PingOne DaVinci is the most mature identity orchestration engine on the market. The visual canvas allows architects to design identity flows that span multiple identity providers, risk engines, data sources, and business logic — all without writing code. A single DaVinci flow can authenticate a user against Okta, evaluate risk with a third-party fraud engine, check entitlements in SailPoint, apply policy from an external authorization service, and provision access in a downstream application.

DaVinci's connector ecosystem includes hundreds of pre-built integrations with identity vendors, security tools, communication platforms, and business applications. When a pre-built connector does not exist, custom HTTP connectors can integrate any API-accessible service into the flow.

PingFederate provides protocol translation and federation capabilities that bridge legacy identity systems with modern cloud services. Organizations use PingFederate to connect SAML-only applications to OIDC-based identity providers, translate Kerberos tokens for cloud access, and federate identities across organizational boundaries. This protocol mediation is essential for identity fabric implementations where legacy systems must participate in modern identity flows.

PingOne Authorize adds dynamic, policy-based authorization that can be shared across the fabric. Rather than each application implementing its own authorization logic, centralized policies evaluate attributes from any source — user directory, risk engine, governance system, or external data — to make consistent access decisions.

Role in Identity Fabric

Ping Identity serves as the orchestration and federation backbone of an identity fabric, connecting disparate identity systems through DaVinci and ensuring protocol compatibility through PingFederate.

Best For

Enterprises building identity fabric architectures that need to orchestrate across multiple identity vendors and bridge legacy and modern identity systems.

2. Strata Identity

Strata Identity is the only vendor built specifically for identity fabric and identity orchestration. The company's Maverics platform was designed from the ground up to solve the problem of fragmented, multi-vendor identity infrastructure.

Key Capabilities

Strata Maverics provides an identity orchestration layer that sits between applications and identity providers, abstracting the identity layer so that applications are decoupled from specific identity implementations. This abstraction enables organizations to migrate between identity providers, run multiple providers simultaneously, or compose identity services from different vendors without modifying applications.

The Maverics Identity Orchestration Gateway intercepts authentication requests and routes them through configurable workflows that can involve any combination of identity providers, directories, and risk engines. For example, an organization migrating from on-premises Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) to Okta can use Maverics to route authentication requests to either system — or both — based on migration progress, user group, or application.

Strata's Application Connectors translate between the authentication protocols that applications expect and the protocols that modern identity providers support. Legacy applications that require header-based authentication, proprietary cookies, or older SAML bindings can be connected to modern OIDC providers without modifying application code.

The Identity Migration Automation capabilities allow organizations to migrate users between identity providers without disruption. Maverics handles credential migration, session continuity, and gradual cutover, reducing the risk and complexity of identity platform migrations.

Strata provides a Fabric Catalog that maps the identity capabilities of connected systems and identifies coverage gaps. The catalog helps architects understand which systems handle authentication, which provide governance, and where orchestration is needed to fill gaps.

Role in Identity Fabric

Strata Identity is the orchestration and abstraction layer of an identity fabric, providing the middleware that connects applications to a heterogeneous identity infrastructure.

Best For

Organizations with fragmented identity infrastructure that need to unify multiple identity providers, migrate between platforms, or modernize legacy applications without modifying their code. Strata is particularly valuable during identity platform migrations and consolidation projects.

3. Microsoft Entra

Microsoft Entra contributes to identity fabric through its breadth of identity services — Entra ID, Entra ID Governance, Entra Verified ID, Entra External ID, Entra Internet Access, and Entra Private Access — that collectively span authentication, governance, network access, and decentralized identity.

Key Capabilities

Entra ID serves as the primary identity provider for organizations in the Microsoft ecosystem, handling authentication and SSO for thousands of cloud applications alongside on-premises resources via application proxy and hybrid agents. Conditional Access provides a policy engine that evaluates user risk, device compliance, location, and application sensitivity to make real-time access decisions.

Entra ID Governance adds lifecycle workflows, access reviews, entitlement management, and privileged identity management. Lifecycle workflows automate onboarding and offboarding based on HR system events, while entitlement management bundles related access into packages that users can request through a self-service portal.

Entra Verified ID introduces decentralized identity credentials into the fabric, enabling organizations to issue and verify digital credentials that users control. This is particularly relevant for cross-organizational scenarios where traditional federation is impractical.

Entra External ID (formerly Azure AD B2C and Azure AD External Identities) handles customer and partner identity, extending the Entra fabric beyond the workforce to external stakeholders.

Entra Internet Access and Entra Private Access extend identity-based security to network traffic, replacing traditional VPN and secure web gateway solutions with an identity-aware Security Service Edge (SSE) architecture.

Role in Identity Fabric

Microsoft Entra provides the most complete single-vendor identity fabric for Microsoft-centric organizations, covering workforce identity, customer identity, governance, network access, and decentralized identity within a unified platform.

Best For

Organizations deeply invested in the Microsoft ecosystem that want to build an identity fabric primarily from Microsoft components, leveraging the bundled licensing and tight integration across Entra services.

4. Okta

Okta contributes to identity fabric through its Workforce Identity Cloud, Customer Identity Cloud (Auth0), and Okta Identity Governance (OIG), plus its extensive Integration Network that connects the fabric to thousands of applications.

Key Capabilities

Okta's Integration Network (OIN) with over 7,500 pre-built integrations provides the broadest application connectivity layer in any identity fabric. Each integration goes beyond basic SSO to include lifecycle management via SCIM, enabling the fabric to provision and deprovision users across the application landscape.

Okta Workflows serves as the orchestration engine, connecting identity events to downstream actions across the fabric. Workflows can integrate with non-Okta identity systems, enabling orchestration that spans multiple vendors. For example, a workflow triggered by a user's role change in the HR system can update Okta group membership, trigger a recertification in Saviynt, and rotate credentials in CyberArk.

The Okta System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) server allows Okta to act as the provisioning backbone of the fabric, receiving identity lifecycle events from any SCIM-compliant source and propagating changes to all connected applications.

Okta's Identity Engine provides a composable authentication pipeline where each step — identity verification, factor evaluation, risk assessment, policy evaluation — can be customized, allowing the authentication flow to incorporate signals from external fabric components.

Auth0 (Customer Identity Cloud) extends the fabric to customer-facing applications with developer-friendly SDKs, social connections, and B2B multi-tenancy capabilities.

Role in Identity Fabric

Okta serves as the primary identity provider and provisioning backbone of an identity fabric, with the broadest application connectivity and workflow automation for cross-vendor orchestration.

Best For

Organizations that want Okta as the central hub of their identity fabric, connecting to specialized governance, PAM, and CIAM solutions through integrations and Workflows.

5. ForgeRock (Ping Identity)

ForgeRock, now part of Ping Identity, contributes identity platform capabilities — authentication, lifecycle management, and directory services — that serve as foundational building blocks in an identity fabric.

Key Capabilities

ForgeRock's authentication tree framework provides the most granular composability for authentication flows. Each node in the tree is an independent unit that can query external services, evaluate risk signals, or apply business logic. This composability makes ForgeRock authentication trees natural participants in an identity fabric, where authentication decisions may depend on signals from multiple vendors.

ForgeRock Identity Management provides BPMN-based lifecycle workflows that can model complex provisioning processes spanning multiple identity systems. The reconciliation engine continuously detects and resolves inconsistencies between the ForgeRock directory and connected systems, ensuring data integrity across the fabric.

ForgeRock Directory Services provides a highly scalable LDAP and REST directory that can serve as the authoritative identity store in the fabric, or synchronize with other directories to maintain consistency.

ForgeRock's Edge Security capabilities extend identity services to IoT and edge computing scenarios, bringing fabric concepts to device identities and constrained environments where traditional identity protocols are impractical.

Role in Identity Fabric

ForgeRock provides customizable identity platform components — authentication, lifecycle management, and directory — that serve as foundational elements in complex identity fabric architectures.

Best For

Organizations building identity fabrics that require maximum customization of authentication flows, lifecycle workflows, and directory services, particularly at very large scale.

6. Saviynt

Saviynt contributes the governance and intelligence layer of an identity fabric, providing centralized visibility, access certification, and risk analytics across all connected identity systems.

Key Capabilities

Saviynt Enterprise Identity Cloud connects to multiple identity providers, directories, applications, and infrastructure platforms to create a unified governance view. The platform aggregates entitlements from all connected systems, enabling organizations to see every user's complete access footprint regardless of which identity provider manages their authentication.

Saviynt's Application Access Governance (AAG) provides deep visibility into application-level entitlements — not just which applications a user can access, but which specific functions, data sets, and permissions they hold within each application. This granularity is essential for meaningful access certifications and segregation of duties enforcement.

The Access Intelligence engine uses machine learning to analyze access patterns across the fabric, identifying peer-group outliers, dormant entitlements, and toxic access combinations. Recommendations are surfaced to reviewers during certification campaigns, improving both the speed and accuracy of access reviews.

Saviynt's Identity Graph maps relationships between identities, entitlements, roles, and applications across the entire fabric, visualizing the complex web of access that spans multiple identity systems. Security teams use the Identity Graph to trace access paths, investigate incidents, and identify excessive privilege.

Cross-cloud entitlement management covers AWS, Azure, GCP, and other cloud platforms, extending governance to cloud infrastructure permissions that often fall outside the scope of traditional IGA solutions.

Role in Identity Fabric

Saviynt provides the governance, compliance, and intelligence layer of an identity fabric, ensuring visibility and control over access regardless of which identity provider handles authentication.

Best For

Organizations that need a dedicated governance layer spanning multiple identity providers and cloud platforms, particularly those subject to regulatory requirements for periodic access reviews, segregation of duties, and audit reporting.

7. One Identity

One Identity provides a suite of identity products — OneLogin (IDaaS), Identity Manager (IGA), Safeguard (PAM), and Active Roles (AD management) — that collectively address multiple layers of an identity fabric from a single vendor.

Key Capabilities

One Identity's Unified Identity Security Platform connects its product lines into a coordinated solution. OneLogin provides cloud SSO and MFA, Identity Manager handles governance and lifecycle management, Safeguard manages privileged access, and Active Roles provides delegated Active Directory administration.

Identity Manager provides comprehensive identity governance with over 80 pre-built connectors for enterprise applications, directories, and cloud platforms. The platform supports access requests, multi-level approvals, periodic certifications, and separation of duties enforcement. Role mining and modeling capabilities help organizations design and optimize their role structure.

Safeguard for Privileged Passwords and Safeguard for Privileged Sessions secure and monitor privileged access to critical systems. The integration between Identity Manager and Safeguard enables governance teams to include privileged entitlements in access certifications, closing the gap between standard and privileged access governance.

Active Roles provides delegated Active Directory management with granular permissions, workflow automation, and virtual attributes that extend AD's native schema without modifying the directory. In hybrid environments, Active Roles synchronizes with Entra ID to maintain consistency between on-premises and cloud directories.

One Identity Starling provides cloud-based identity analytics and risk intelligence that spans the entire One Identity suite, identifying threats and optimization opportunities across the fabric.

Role in Identity Fabric

One Identity provides a multi-layer identity fabric from a single vendor, covering authentication (OneLogin), governance (Identity Manager), privileged access (Safeguard), and directory management (Active Roles).

Best For

Organizations that prefer a single-vendor approach to identity fabric, particularly those with significant Active Directory investments and need for integrated IGA and PAM capabilities.

Comparison Matrix

| Capability | Ping Identity | Strata | Microsoft Entra | Okta | ForgeRock | Saviynt | One Identity | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Orchestration | DaVinci (market leader) | Maverics (purpose-built) | Limited | Workflows | Auth Trees | Limited | Limited | | Protocol Translation | PingFederate | Maverics | App Proxy | Limited | PingFederate | N/A | OneLogin | | Governance | Via partner | N/A | Entra Governance | OIG | Built-in | Core (market leader) | Identity Manager | | PAM | Via partner | N/A | PIM (limited) | Via partner | Via partner | Via partner | Safeguard | | Customer Identity | PingOne CIAM | N/A | External ID | Auth0 | Built-in | N/A | N/A | | Migration Support | Limited | Core capability | Cloud sync | Limited | Limited | N/A | Active Roles | | Decentralized Identity | PingOne Neo | N/A | Verified ID | N/A | Limited | N/A | N/A |

Designing Your Identity Fabric

An effective identity fabric architecture typically involves:

1. Primary Identity Provider: Okta, Microsoft Entra, or Ping Identity as the core authentication platform.
2. Orchestration Layer: Ping DaVinci or Strata Maverics to coordinate flows across multiple systems and translate protocols for legacy applications.
3. Governance Layer: Saviynt, One Identity, or the native governance capabilities of your primary IDP to provide centralized access visibility and compliance.
4. Privileged Access Layer: CyberArk or One Identity Safeguard for securing administrative access, integrated into the governance layer.
5. Intelligence Layer: Unified analytics that correlate identity events across all fabric components to detect threats and optimize access.

The key principle is that no single vendor provides every layer of the fabric. The fabric's value comes from the integration and orchestration between specialized components, creating a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Conclusion

Identity fabric represents the maturation of enterprise identity architecture from monolithic platforms to composed, multi-vendor ecosystems. The seven solutions reviewed here each contribute critical capabilities — orchestration, governance, authentication, privileged access, and protocol translation — that together form a comprehensive identity fabric. The path to identity fabric is iterative: start with your most pressing identity gap, deploy a solution that addresses it, and connect it to your existing infrastructure through orchestration. Over time, the fabric grows to encompass all identity services, providing the unified visibility, consistent policy, and operational agility that modern enterprises require.