Case Study
Scaling from 17 to 80 Applications: IGA Transformation for a Global Airline
An in-depth interview with Bridgesoft's CEO & CTO
About the Interview
This case study is drawn from an in-depth interview with Bridgesoft's CEO and CTO, conducted by David Lee, founder of the Identity Jedi Newsletter. David brings a 22-year track record in identity and access management and is widely recognized as a vendor-neutral voice in the IAM industry, giving this account an independent, practitioner-level perspective on Bridgesoft's work.
The conversation covered a range of topics relevant to identity leaders navigating a maturing IGA market:
- IGA Commoditization & Market Evolution
- Onboarding Velocity as a Competitive Advantage
- Legacy Platform Migration Risks
- Operational Cost Reduction
- Unified Governance for Human & Non-Human Identities
Client Information
Executive Summary
A global airline modernized its identity governance program in partnership with Bridgesoft, moving away from a legacy IGA approach that had onboarded just 17 applications over 15 years. Using Bridgesoft's Identity Gateway, the airline onboarded roughly 80 applications in approximately four months — while cutting annual IAM operating costs by 47%.
The Challenge with Legacy IGA
After 15 years running a legacy IGA platform, the airline had succeeded in onboarding only 17 applications. The environment was defined by complex integrations, deep legacy system dependencies, heavy infrastructure overhead, and highly custom workflows — which meant that every new application onboarding became a lengthy, specialized project rather than a repeatable process.
Business Impact of Slow Onboarding
Governance Coverage Gap
Most applications across the enterprise remained ungoverned, creating audit and compliance exposure.
Resource Bottleneck
Onboarding required scarce, highly specialized integration expertise, limiting how fast the program could move.
Scalability Crisis
The pace of onboarding could not keep up with the organization's growing application footprint.
Rising Costs
Maintaining and extending the legacy platform grew more expensive with every passing year.
Objectives
- Dramatically increase the number of governed applications across the enterprise.
- Reduce the time and specialized effort required to onboard each new application.
- Lower the total cost of operating the IAM/IGA program.
- Establish a unified governance model that could scale to cover human and non-human identities going forward.
Solution: Bridgesoft Identity Gateway
The airline adopted Bridgesoft Identity Gateway, a SaaS-based architecture built to support multiple integration methods out of the box — including REST, SOAP, JDBC/SQL, FTP, LDAP, Messaging Queues, and SCIM.
Rather than requiring custom coding for every new application, Identity Gateway uses a configuration-driven implementation model built on reusable, configurable connectors. This approach dramatically cuts onboarding time per application and reduces dependency on scarce, specialized engineering resources.
Results and Impact
Quantifiable Results
Process & Operational Impact
- Faster time-to-value for every new application brought into governance.
- Reduced reliance on specialized integration engineers for day-to-day onboarding work.
- A more consistent, standardized onboarding process across application types.
- Stronger audit-readiness, driven by significantly broader governance coverage.
- A foundation now being extended to govern machine and AI identities alongside human identities.
Conclusion
- Legacy, code-heavy IGA platforms struggle to scale alongside modern, fast-growing enterprise application portfolios.
- A configuration-driven, SaaS-based approach can compress onboarding timelines from years to months.
- Operational cost savings compound as governance coverage expands across the organization.
- The airline's transformation illustrates a broader industry shift toward agile, scalable identity governance.
About This Case Study
This case study is based on an independent interview conducted by David Lee of Identity Jedi Newsletter and reflects the perspectives shared during that conversation. It is presented independently of vendor marketing materials.