Trace Id is missing
March 09, 2022

Avanade reimagines access to training and skills management using Microsoft Entra Verified ID

Leading professional services and technology provider Avanade finds that some of its best ideas come from within. Its latest innovation grew from its vision for a fresh approach in how it tracks professional certifications for its consulting staff. The company found that questions like “How can we make life easier for Avanade employees?” led it to consider ways to reimagine larger use cases. Avanade found that perennial project staffing issues—especially assembling the best possible team for every project more easily—could be answered by one solution: Microsoft Entra Verified ID. Now, Avanade looks forward to a new, highly secure identity era for itself—and its many clients.

Avanade

“We’re shifting from a company owning all the identities and credentials to the users controlling their own credentials—when they want to use them and what they want to share.”

Brandon Nolan, Global Digital Identity Lead, Avanade

Ask any project manager at a consulting firm about their biggest challenges and you’re sure to hear about how difficult it can be to match the most qualified person with the right project. Now, Avanade uses Verified ID on its journey to put the right person on the right project at the right time.

Sorting through the certification haystack

When Avanade project managers start to assemble the best team for a customer engagement, they face multiple questions that don’t always have ready answers. Who has what qualifications? Are their certifications still valid? Who needs training to be properly certified for an upcoming project? Project managers wanted a heat map for easy visualization of this data to bring the best possible team to projects starting soon—and forecast future needs.

Brandon Nolan, Global Digital Identity Lead at Avanade, discussed the subject with One Identity, a Quest Business Unit, a Microsoft Partner Network member with Gold competencies in identity and access management plus several other specialties, and a leading CoSell independent software vendor. A unified identity security solutions provider, One Identity is a strategic partner for Avanade and provides a learning portal that offers trainings and certifies Avanade consultants in One Identity product skills. Those conversations with One Identity led the Global Digital Identity team to delve into the issue with one of their Microsoft contacts. They created a plan for a prototype showcasing a future-first identity management model. It was also a perfect springboard for including One Identity in a close three-way relationship with Microsoft to focus on the topic. Ultimately, the resulting pilot project is an entry point to the benefits of decentralized identity management with verifiable credentials for companies everywhere.

The company naturally considered the issue from the viewpoint of its most precious assets—its employees. Privacy is vital. Every day, Avanade professionals have more conversations questioning how companies handle employee data—questions like “Why do we need all that information? How do we control it?” The company believes that a lot of good legislative policies about personal data are arising, but they’re still maturing. That’s why Avanade takes the approach of starting with the least data necessary and only sharing what the individual wants to share.

Solving multiple identity concerns with Microsoft Entra Verified ID

As people live more of their lives online, passwords proliferate, and that expanded presence increases risk. Everything about passwords that makes an employee sigh—they’re hard to remember and can delay access to crucial applications—creates opportunity for malicious actors, who target individual identities as their passport into corporate digital assets.

In the traditional centralized identity model, multiple entities hold their own versions of identity for a user. That creates risk for that individual, who must depend on the cybersecurity strength of those companies to safeguard their credentials. The employees lack control over their own privacy.

The decentralized model envisioned by Microsoft and the Avanade team puts that control in the hands of the individual. “We’re shifting from a company owning all the identities and credentials to the users controlling their own credentials—when they want to use them and what they want to share,” says Nolan. “This approach also addresses security, trust, and privacy concerns.”

Other practicalities can’t be ignored. “Certifying employees from both our companies—One Identity as a software vendor and Avanade as a service vendor—involves a lot of overhead,” adds John Pfeiffer, Partner Business Manager at One Identity. “We craved an easy way to keep records about certifications current and accurate.”

Using Verified ID removes the need for federation (the connections between the identity management systems of multiple organizations). Instead, separate entities like employees, contractors, vendors, or clients have digitally validated, customized credentials that they can use in multiple scenarios. Avanade and One Identity had been federated so that Avanade employees could access certification exams and One Identity could report their results and new certifications to Avanade. Although federation offers employees the benefit of a single sign-on to reduce the credentials they need to remember, it exerts overhead on the company to set up and maintain accurate identity data. The prototype created by Nolan’s team replaces that federation. “Our employees can sign into the partner portal without usernames and password credentials,” he explains. “We’re using an Avanade employee digital staff card on their mobile device that signs them into the partner portal.”

Converging success factors across the organization

The convenience factor for the employee is obvious. There are other benefits, too. “With Microsoft Entra Verified ID, we have strong authentication and strong trust without federation between organizations,” says Nolan. “That reduces credential theft risk and creates significant process efficiencies for both the IT and business sides of the house.”

Based on open standards, the technology is broadly applicable across diverse platforms, with burgeoning possibilities for its use. “We’ve already identified around 60 different use cases for Verified ID,” says Nolan. “It’s so flexible that it can be used in potentially hundreds of different ways throughout an organization.”

As one example, Avanade looks forward to using Verified ID as a convenient way to add external people to crucial conversations on Microsoft Teams. That could mean precious time saved when bringing a security consultant to a cybersecurity team to respond to an incident while still checking that the person is who they claim to be. “This identity-proofing aspect of Microsoft Entra Verified ID is not just safe for the organization, it’s productivity-enhancing for the team,” enthuses Nolan. “An outside expert can immediately get the necessary credential to access the relevant system and then join Teams calls to work with our team.” 

Nolan and Pfeiffer look forward to the possibilities. “Our use case for Microsoft Entra Verified ID to improve certification management and accelerate mustering the optimal team highlights the benefits that come from marrying effective solutions,” says Pfeiffer. “This is absolutely fascinating in its simplicity, and I anticipate wide adoption in the near future.”

Nolan appreciates the opportunity that grew from his team’s early adoption of the technology. “As adoption increases and more people contribute use cases and ideas, some really magical things become possible,” he says. “Embracing Microsoft Entra Verified ID early has been an awesome opportunity for us as a professional services organization. We’ve used it to create value in line with our own deep point of view on identity. This is exciting technology, and we want to keep that edge and keep exploring the possibilities it offers.”

Find out more about Avanade on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

“Our use case for Microsoft Entra Verified ID to improve certification management and accelerate mustering the optimal team highlights the benefits that come from marrying effective solutions. This is absolutely fascinating in its simplicity, and I anticipate wide adoption in the near future.”

John Pfeiffer, Partner Business Manager, One Identity

Take the next step

Fuel innovation with Microsoft

Talk to an expert about custom solutions

Let us help you create customized solutions and achieve your unique business goals.

Drive results with proven solutions

Achieve more with the products and solutions that helped our customers reach their goals.

Follow Microsoft