Is "Identity Manager for Cloud" the same as Crowd for server?

[Johannes Buverud]

In the US Summit, Atlassian introduced "Identity Manager for Atlassian Cloud":

https://www.atlassian.com/enterprise/cloud/identity-manager

Is this basically the same as Crowd for server?

https://www.atlassian.com/software/crowd

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

No, it's separate.  As Cloud and Server diverge, their requirements for user management are changing, and Cloud is moving away from Crowd.

[Johannes Buverud]

Hi Nic and thanks for your reply,

Are you saying that Crowd used to be available for Cloud?

It is only possible to buy it for Server, so I thought it was purely for Server.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Cloud used to use a version of it, but it was never a product to buy, just used internally to Cloud.

[Johannes Buverud]

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

But what are the basic differences between the two? They are both SSO-tools, right?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, they're both identity management tools.  SSO is an afterthought for them to be frank - it wasn't even in the first version of Crowd.   Crowd is for managing people and groups in directories, external and internal to itself.  Identity manager is not about directories, it's about direct identities - Atlassian accounts for example.

[Johannes Buverud]

I see.

Coming from the Remedy world, I miss (in Jira/Service Desk) the wide options of attributes stored on a user, readily available when working eg with incidents.

We are looking on using the Insight plugin for these extended attributes, but maybe Crowd is an option?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I think I'd stick with Insight.  Crowd doesn't do them really.

[Johannes Buverud]

Ok, thanks for your help!