The clock is ticking. Akamai Identity Cloud (AIC) will be deprecated at the end of 2027. This deadline is rapidly approaching, and for many businesses, migrating their Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) landscape is a complex undertaking that requires immediate, expert planning.
The good news? You don’t have to navigate this transition alone.
Next Reason is Akamai’s longest-standing and most experienced partner in the CIAM space. We have been specifically designated by Akamai as the Customer Migration Center of Excellence to help you successfully transition from AIC to a new CIAM platform with zero disruption to your business or your end-users.
Your Trusted Advisory and Safe Pair of Hands
When facing a foundational migration, you need an unbiased partner with deep, proven expertise. Here is some of our experience:
- We have successfully migrated 100+ million user records.
- Our experience spans complex global enterprises in sectors including energy, pharma, consumer packaged goods (CPG), education, security, and more.
- We operate as an unbiased staff extension—a safe pair of hands dedicated to your success. We are on the customer side, not the CIAM business side, ensuring our recommendations always align with your long-term business strategy.
- Our customer-first team maintains the highest level of security by maintaining a SOC2 type 2 annual audit, monthly mandatory security training, ITIL4 certifications, GDPR compliance, and certified expertise on the world’s most used and loved CIAM platforms.
Your Migration Blueprint: Achieving Zero Downtime by 2027
To de-risk the timeline and achieve zero downtime for end-users, a structured, two-path strategy is essential. The path you take depends on how your applications currently utilize AIC.
Option A: Phased Migration
This is the best path for organizations where users are associated with multiple applications and those applications require different cutover dates.
- How it works: AIC remains the source of truth for a period. Applications are migrated one by one. A key feature is the Next Reason DataSync, which ensures consistency between the legacy AIC system and the new CIAM system until the final application is cut over and the legacy system is decommissioned.
Option B: Batched Migration
This option is ideal when multiple applications can be cutover on a single date or for applications where users are not shared across systems.
- How it works: A defined “Application Cutover Period” allows for several bulk migrations to occur. While still structured to ensure consistency, this approach is more consolidated than a Phased Migration, aligning multiple application cutovers within a tight window.
Solving an Often Overlooked, but Critical Challenge: Consent Management
Beyond the structural migration, it is likely that businesses need to unpack the current implementation and future goals surrounding the user’s legal acceptances. And it turns out that this is an excellent opportunity to enhance their solution so that privacy and compliance becomes a strength – up-to-date, attentive, but non-intrusive.
We solve this by focusing on:
- Version History: Accurately migrating version of the legal terms (TOS, GDPR Privacy Policy/Statement) each customer accepted. If that is not tracked, performing a data transformation as a starting point for consent going forward.
- Data Structuring: Re-architecting and structuring the consent data so it is compliant and usable within the new CIAM system. And in some cases, moving the functionality to a third-party that is designed for consent altogether.
- User Prompts: Defining and implementing the logic to ensure a user is or isn’t prompted to accept the latest version of your legal documents once they migrate—guaranteeing compliance while avoiding unnecessary friction.
Akamai Identity Consent Data Structure
AIC allows customers to customize the data schema, but it is likely that a customer’s consent data is stored similar to this:
legalAcceptances.clientId
legalAcceptances.dateAccepted
legalAcceptances.legalAcceptanceId
And through the use of ‘plurals,’ it is likely that each user record has historical data associated with each opt in. This is the foundation for understanding, extracting, and transforming to fit into the new CIAM system along with applying business logic to match.
Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late
The 2027 deadline may seem distant, but the planning and execution required for a successful migration of this scale demands a head start. Engaging with a trusted partner now is the only way to derisk your timeline and ensure a seamless, compliant transition.
As the official Akamai Identity Cloud Customer Migration Center of Excellence, Next Reason is ready to serve as your unbiased partner and expert staff extension.
Ready to begin planning your migration? Contact Next Reason today to schedule your migration strategy consultation.
