Topic starter
05/07/2026 10:45 pm
TL;DR: Akamai Identity Cloud is in maintenance mode with support ending on December 31, 2027, and Descope argues that legacy CIAM now lags on adaptive MFA, passwordless authentication, multi-tenant design, and agentic identity support, according to Descope. Legacy customer identity assumptions are giving way to orchestration-led, migration-aware platforms that can handle human users, partners, and AI agents together.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Descope: “The Top 6 Akamai Identity Cloud Alternatives”.
By the numbers:
- Descope says support for Identity Cloud ends on December 31, 2027.
- Descope's 2025 State of Customer Identity Report found that only 2% of organizations believe legacy username/password auths balance security and user experience.
Key questions
Q: What should teams do first when a CIAM platform enters maintenance mode?
A: Start by inventorying every custom authentication flow, tenant model, and application dependency tied to the legacy platform.
Q: Why do legacy CIAM platforms create more risk as requirements change?
A: They often freeze identity decisions inside rigid rules and platform-specific workflows, which makes ordinary changes slower and harder to test.
Q: What breaks when a CIAM platform lacks native multi-tenant support?
A: Teams usually end up simulating tenant boundaries with custom modeling, manual onboarding, or application-side logic.
Practitioner guidance
- Audit legacy CIAM for migration blockers Map every custom rule, hosted flow, and application-specific authentication dependency that would slow an exit from a maintenance-mode platform.
- Prioritise native multi-tenant support Require tenant isolation, delegated administration, and tenant-aware policy enforcement as baseline criteria for B2B and partner identity.
- Separate orchestration from application code Move login, MFA, recovery, and step-up logic into an orchestration layer so flow changes do not require repeated application rewrites.
Bottom line: Legacy CIAM becomes harder to defend once feature development stops, because technical debt and lifecycle risk compound together.
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05/07/2026 10:48 pm
Orchestration is now the governing model for modern CIAM. Legacy customer identity platforms increasingly fail because they assume authentication logic will remain relatively stable inside one application stack. Once teams need to support adaptive MFA, passwordless flows, tenant-aware access, and rapid journey change, orchestration becomes the control plane rather than an optional feature. Practitioners should read CIAM roadmaps as lifecycle architecture, not product feature lists.
A few things that frame the scale:
- AI-related credential leaks surged 81.5% year-over-year in 2025, with the surrounding AI infrastructure leaking 5x faster than core LLM providers, according to the State of Secrets Sprawl 2026.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How should organisations think about AI agent identity in CIAM?
A: AI agents should be treated as separate identity subjects with their own authentication, authorization, and audit requirements. If the platform only handles human login journeys, the organisation will be forced to bolt on control logic later, which increases risk and slows deployment.
👉 Read our full editorial: Akamai Identity Cloud alternatives show CIAM is moving to orchestration