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CIO Guides

Each of our CIO guides assesses one technology for decision-makers – following the same blueprint: what it is, which products it replaces, what it really costs, how it handles GDPR and data sovereignty – and when it is NOT the right choice. No license interests, with sources and price ranges from real projects.

SAML vs. OIDC: the protocol question behind every SSO project, explained

SAML and OIDC solve the same problem from two eras: delegating login to a central identity service. SAML 2.0 (2005, OASIS, XML) is the federation standard of corporate IT; OIDC (2014, OpenID Foundation, JSON/JWT on top of OAuth 2.0) is the standard for new web and mobile applications. The practical rule: enterprise customers dictate SAML, your own applications speak OIDC — a broker like Keycloak serves both at once.

Profilbild Matthias Radscheit (Geschäftsführer)

Matthias Radscheit

What is Keycloak? Open-Source Identity & Access Management Explained (2026)

Keycloak is an open-source identity and access management (IAM) system: single sign-on, user and permission management, OIDC/OAuth2/SAML and AD/LDAP integration — self-hosted instead of rented. It replaces per-user licensed identity services such as Auth0, Okta or Azure AD B2C. Current release: version 26.7.4 (September 2026), four minor releases per year, one major release every two to three years. Three things matter for decision-makers: costs do not scale with the user count, identity data stays on your own EU infrastructure (GDPR), and as a CNCF project with Red Hat origins the project's future is broadly secured. A managed IdP remains the right choice for small teams without operational capacity.

Profilbild Matthias Radscheit (Geschäftsführer)

Matthias Radscheit

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