KuppingerCole: Identity Fabric as the Successor to the IAM Suite

KuppingerCole's Identity Fabric framework positions enterprise identity as a deliberately composed plane of services — directory, federation, MFA, IGA, PAM, customer identity, machine identity, threat detection — rather than as a single vendor's suite. The framing has gained traction in 2023-2025 commentary and is referenced in Gartner's "Identity Fabric Immunity" guidance as well.

For identity-architecture practice the value of the Identity Fabric model is that it makes the architecture the unit of work rather than the platform. You can still buy Okta or Entra, SailPoint or Saviynt, Island or Talon — but the design decision is how those components compose into a fabric that operates as one control plane. The signals between components, the policy authority, and the data lineage all become explicit design surfaces.

The Identity Mesh language we use is closely related to KuppingerCole's Fabric — both name the same architectural insight that identity is a composition problem, not a product problem.