In fact, the exact opposite conclusion of the article is reached if we follow this logic. One of the taglines reads: Buyers want different things. Well, maybe the stakeholder/champion actually using your software might. But often they are not the ones that are making the money decision in an organization. The people who ARE making that decision, however, do not want different things. They probably could care less about different things. They want SSO.
An admittedly wandering defense of the SSO tax
21–30 of 99 posts
Re: An admittedly wandering defense of the SSO tax
#22This car with no seat belts, no airbags, and no ABS is just price discrimination! Strangely, no one seems interested in celebrating the implied discount for not having safety.
This is a solid objection that I hadn't considered before! Why isn't SAML SSO mandated (either literally or my convention)? Practically speaking, as someone who spends all day trying to convince developers to implement SAML SSO, I really wish this were the case :) I think in practice, software vendors correctly assess that relatively few of their prospective customers actually care. If many small / price sensitive co…
To be quite frank: this strongly suggests that while you put a lot of effort into writing a long article in defense of the SSO tax, you didn't perform more than the most cursory research about why it's a topic of discussion.
This argument is literally above the fold on the two top search results for the term.
>In short: SSO is a core security requirement for any company with more than five employees.
And the other explicitly makes the car-safety analogy:
>Imagine buying a car and the manufacturer asks for an extra payment to unlock 100% of the braking power. Not offering security features if they already exist in your product means a vendor doesn’t care about your security. Our aim is to spotlight vendors who overcharge for security features, in hopes of instigating a change in the industry.
And to be franker: the word "security" appears exactly once in your entire piece. That's a near-complete avoidance of the actual issue that people are highlighting.
I perfectly understand the rationale behind the pricing model. The point is that "only large enterprises need or care about SSO" is completely wrong-headed and detrimental to the overall security posture of any business customer. That is and should be unacceptable.
Re: An admittedly wandering defense of the SSO tax
#23As someone who deals with application support, another big reason is SSO is such a support nightmare. No one wanted to touch SSO tickets because of how frustrating they were to deal with. People wouldn't follow the instructions. Microsoft/Google moved something in their portal and we didn't know so instructions were useless. Microsoft/Google would be having issues and we got tickets because they were still working un…
At WorkOS we solved this by shipping the whole config workflow in the form of an admin portal. It checks things like SAML certificate, signatures/assertions, attribute mapping, etc. and a zillion other edge cases across dozens of identity systems.
It’s pretty much “Stripe Checkout" for setting up SAML. Live demo here (click “Configure”) https://explore.workos.com/app/settings
Re: An admittedly wandering defense of the SSO tax
#24As someone who deals with application support, another big reason is SSO is such a support nightmare. No one wanted to touch SSO tickets because of how frustrating they were to deal with. People wouldn't follow the instructions. Microsoft/Google moved something in their portal and we didn't know so instructions were useless. Microsoft/Google would be having issues and we got tickets because they were still working un…
This is the real reason there's an SSO tax. It costs to support SSO, the customers who want SSO should pay for that cost.
Re: An admittedly wandering defense of the SSO tax
#25As someone who deals with application support, another big reason is SSO is such a support nightmare. No one wanted to touch SSO tickets because of how frustrating they were to deal with. People wouldn't follow the instructions. Microsoft/Google moved something in their portal and we didn't know so instructions were useless. Microsoft/Google would be having issues and we got tickets because they were still working un…
The “human cost” of SSO is definitely the hardest part. At WorkOS we solved this by shipping the whole config workflow in the form of an admin portal. It checks things like SAML certificate, signatures/assertions, attribute mapping, etc. and a zillion other edge cases across dozens of identity systems. It’s pretty much “Stripe Checkout" for setting up SAML. Live demo here (click “Configure”) https://explore.workos.co…
Re: An admittedly wandering defense of the SSO tax
#26Re: An admittedly wandering defense of the SSO tax
#27Re: An admittedly wandering defense of the SSO tax
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a solid objection that I hadn't considered before! Why isn't SAML SSO mandated (either literally or my convention)? Practically speaking, as someone who spends all day trying to convince developers to implement SAML SSO, I really wish this were the case :) I think in practice, software vendors correctly assess that relatively few of their prospective customers actually care. If many small / price sensitive co…
>This is a solid objection that I hadn't considered before! To be quite frank: this strongly suggests that while you put a lot of effort into writing a long article in defense of the SSO tax, you didn't perform more than the most cursory research about why it's a topic of discussion. This argument is literally above the fold on the two top search results for the term. >In short: SSO is a core security requirement for…
I specifically meant that the previous commenter made me think of mandates.
I run a company that makes SAML SSO software. I've thought quite extensively about SAML SSO. See:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41036982
Addendum: I have a very strongly vested interest in more people using SSO. I literally spend my time trying to convince developers to set it up!
Re: An admittedly wandering defense of the SSO tax
#29This is a good economics lesson but fails to address the actual issue people have with the SSO tax. It isn't about the concept of price discrimination, but price discrimination when it comes to security . You can charge extra for convenience features or other value-add features, sure, but the choice of login provider is something that should be table stakes for every person and every organization regardless of how bi…
Re: An admittedly wandering defense of the SSO tax
#30The reality is much simpler than the article would have you believe. The article goes through all these convoluted explanations about value add but the simple fact of the matter is that SSO is the one differentiator that businesses will guarantee pay for. The other features are often unknown to stakeholders outside of the internal champion and need explanation oftentimes. But SSO, enterprises always need at a certain…
I think it might be worth saying “SSO is free, up to n users”.
Also this is pricing for “adequate security”, which rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
But I do agree, competent, organizational wide SSO with SCIM is definitely an enterprise feature.