How a Fortune Global 500 pharmaceutical company validated its identity and consent architecture before execution, with Next Reason, Akamai’s Customer Migration Center of Excellence.
A Fortune Global 500 pharmaceutical company was facing the question that defines every CIAM replatform: how to start.
Their incumbent identity platform (Akamai Identity Cloud) is reaching end-of-life. The migration ahead would touch every consumer-facing channel across dozens of country markets, every downstream marketing and master data system, and the daily work of teams across data stewardship, support, and marketing operations.
The internal team had done months of mapping and shortlisting vendors. What they wanted was an independent specialist who could pressure-test the plan, find what they’d missed, and help them defend the program internally, before committing to a multi-year SOW.
They chose Next Reason. Twelve weeks later, they had a validated architecture, business-aligned market sequencing, risks identified early, and internal alignment across functions. The engagement has since expanded into the migration itself, now in execution, with the first market go-live on track.
The decision behind the engagement
For a pharmaceutical leader operating across dozens of country markets, each with its own regulatory consent posture, go-to-market priorities, and appetite for disruption, the legacy identity platform was both critical infrastructure and a closing window.
The internal team had done the work: months of mapping the existing environment, a clear-eyed view of what the new platform needed to do, and a shortlist of vendors. The question they brought to Next Reason was simple: are we right, and what have we missed?
That question decides whether a migration enters execution with conviction or with quiet doubt.
Why a vendor-neutral specialist
Three alternatives sat on the table.
Platform vendor PS teams knew their own products well, but the legacy environment being replaced wasn’t their expertise, and recommending against features of their own platform wasn’t their incentive.
The global systems integrators already inside the account had the people, but not the concentrated CIAM specialism this work required. The customer had decided early that they didn’t want a generalist learning on their time.
Boutique CIAM firms had the specialism, but not the enterprise credentials a pharmaceutical company needs from a partner handling identity at this scale.
Next Reason brought deep expertise in both the legacy platform being replaced and the modern platforms being considered, vendor-neutral by design, and operating at enterprise scale (SOC 2 Type 2, ITIL4, GDPR-ready, more than 20 million identities delivered). Akamai’s selection of Next Reason as Customer Migration Center of Excellence for AIC end-of-life made the choice straightforward.
What the engagement was really for
A 12-week fixed-fee engagement isn’t a large investment against a migration that will run for the better part of a year. The decisions made in those 12 weeks (target architecture, consent strategy, market sequencing, what to keep and what to retire) set the cost ceiling and risk floor for everything that follows.
The customer hired Next Reason for three things:
A pressure test. A team with no incentive to flatter the existing plan, and every incentive to find what the internal team had been too close to see. Where assumptions held, the assessment confirmed them and the team moved on. Where they didn’t, it surfaced the gaps early, while changing course was still cheap.
A translation layer. Identity decisions cascade into consent, master data, marketing automation, commerce, and a dozen other systems, each owned by a different team with different priorities. The specialist’s job was to hold every perspective in view at once and make sure the architecture would work across the organizational seams where most migrations actually break.
A defensible plan. When the internal team went to leadership and global market stakeholders to ask for runway, budget, and cooperation, they needed a plan they could defend on its merits, backed by a partner whose name carries weight in the identity industry.
The strategic outcomes
By the close of the engagement, the customer had moved from we think this will work to we know this will work, and we know where the risks are.
A validated target architecture. The identity and consent design was reviewed against the existing implementation and either confirmed or tightened. The team entered execution without the costliest mistake: discovering an architectural problem after the build had started.
A migration sequence the business signed off on. Country markets migrate at the pace of the local business owners absorbing the change, not the platform team. The assessment produced a phased approach that traded technical convenience for business viability where the two pulled apart.
Risks surfaced early. A small number of issues with the potential to derail the program were named, scoped, and assigned owners while the cost of addressing them was still measured in days, not quarters.
Internal alignment across functions. Identity, consent, downstream systems, and market business teams entered execution sharing the same picture of the program. Migrations fail at the seams, not the technology. We made sure the seams held.
A credible position with platform vendors. A pharmaceutical company negotiating with major identity and consent vendors does so from a stronger position when its architecture is independently validated. The customer entered those conversations with a partner who could speak the vendors’ language without owing them anything.
Six months in
The customer expanded the engagement into the migration itself, now in execution against the plan the assessment produced. The first market go-live is on track. The architecture is holding. The team that built the plan is the team executing it.
The takeaway for IT and security leaders
If you’re facing a CIAM migration of any consequence (a vendor sunset, a consent regime change, a consolidation, a compliance-driven rebuild), the most expensive decisions you’ll make are the ones made before the build begins. The teams that succeed invest deliberately in being right at the start.
We work alongside your internal team. Our job is the pressure test, the translation layer, and the defensible plan that lets them focus on their best work, on a program that will define the next several years of your customer experience.
That’s what we did for one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.
If you’re inside an AIC migration decision, or about to be, we’d be glad to spend 30 minutes pressure-testing where you are.
Customer name withheld by mutual agreement. Specific architectural and operational details have been omitted; full discussion available under NDA.
