3. Choosing Olevi over Other Implementations

In this page we list few reasons, why one might choose Olevi as their Identity Provider instead of some other product.

While Olevi is based on open source software Shibboleth IdP, the added functionalities that Olevi provides are implemented in Finland. Olevi is Finnish product. Here is a well known, but not exhaustive list of benefits that Finland can provide:

List of benefits in doing business in Finland is endless. We are not here to talk about Finland, but Olevi. We know you are interested though, so please, find more facts of Finland here.

Although Finnish, Olevi is International

While Olevi is produced in Finland and uses mainly Finnish or European platforms to create products and produce services, it can be used almost anywhere in the world. There is no restrictions in which nationalities can use Olevi for authentication.

While we would like to offer our products and services anywhere, there is some limitations. We follow EU Sanctions and restrict availability of our products according to sanctions EU has set.

Also it is good to understand that Olevi is mostly a product. While Olevi can produce some services, the most important channel for Olevi to do business is to sell the products it has created according to agreement that is based on license terms of the product.

This means that Olevi is not the controller of the processing of personal data and does not set the rules of processing. The controller for the personal data that is processed using Olevi is the client organisation that uses Olevi products. That organisation will set the rules on how Olevi can be used in the scope that they are using Olevi products.

Independent

Although Olevi is based on open source product, the modules and plugins that make Olevi, are written by us. In addition to our own code, we are very familiar in Shibboleth code and follow closely how Shibboleth evolves.

You can run Olevi in your own datacenter or one chosen by you. If stretched even further, you can be completely separated and hence independent in global actors, like big cloud service providers.

As we saw in Crowdstrike incident, current IT-economy is very centralised. It is possible to create global effects and great havoc by taking down a major key player in providing digital services.

As a single independent player, Olevi probably is not in focus and priorities of bad actors that seek high return and easy access to their bad actions.

Even if Olevi were in focus of bad actors, you can implement totally different kind of countermeasures than what would be possible with a common cloud provider.

When dealing with Olevi, you can verify the actors and audit the distribution chain. Something that is not possible with big actors.

In our opinion, Olevi is ready for military grade security. At the same time Olevi can fit to a use case where a kiosk sells 2 cent activation codes for a lollipop vending machine that requires authentication of those activation codes.

Taxes, Security of Supplies

For Finnish companies, or any other for that matter, it is important to know that Olevi is a company that pays taxes in Finland instead of many other companies providing IT-services that are popular and commonly used even in Finnish companies. By purchasing Finnish or European products one can ensure that innovation stays in Finland and are available in Europe also in future.

In these volatile political times in the world it is very important to think of security of supplies. While many cloud platforms are built to sustain great deal of distress, only way to really be confident that the service is available in all circumstances, is to have it in your own hands.

For example Financial Supervisory Authority in Finland controls how companies in financial sector are prepared for both disruptions in normal circumstances and emergency conditions. Services that have profound effect in economical stability are required to ensure to be available in all circumstances. There is debate whether many providers actually can reach those high standards.

Olevi is not limited in what platform it can be run. Olevi is committed to release its source code to clients that agree to license terms of the code. This ensures the continuity of the service even if Olevi as a company would sieze to exist.

This is not normal nor typical in most authentication products available in the field. Olevi is very committed to client’s service availability and continuity even in extraordinary circumstances.

Improved Security

It is difficult to scale importance of important things, but as important as service continuity, is the security of personal data processing. Also operations security goes hand in hand with continuity and data processing. These are better managed when product is well known and producer is close by. As Olevi makes source code available for clients agreeing to license terms, auditing the product is much more simple as in black box products.

In many cloud based authentication products client needs to accept the processing terms that are set for the product and adapt to them. Very often client doesn’t have a say on e.g. where the personal data is being procssed geographically. Client just has to trust the word from the vendor and accept in order to purchase the product.

Olevi does things differently. Client can decide where the service will be run and how the data will be processed. Operational security of the end service is fully in the hands of the client. While the client has the power of decision, client can ask experienced reseller to operate the product for them and offer services to support the product.

CI/CD

CI/CD is well known acronym for Continuous Integration and Continuous Development. Olevi is being produced based on best practices in software development. Development of Olevi is continuous and we use development pipelines that can connect to client’s development practices.

While Olevi gets better day after day and month after month and has its own practices in producing the product, Olevi makes sure that as we grow, we can still support even those first customers that was committed to us from the start.

Although agile, Olevi does recommend buying the Olevi product from a reseller that can provide proper support services. Taking Olevi products in use most usually is a project that requires integration work in customer’s environment. Capable reseller can provide the expertiese required to suceed in that project and will be able to support the implementation from start of the project until the end of customer’s need for the service.

Manageable expences

Client agrees the price of the product with a reseller. Once the negotiations to purchase Olevi have been concluded, the client can be confident that there is no surprise charges based on growth of the user base or growth of transactions. Olevi price is based on instances rather than CPU-units or amount of monthly active users or the amount of transactions. Olevi scales very well both horisontally and vertically, but scaling performance doesn’t scale costs.

While Olevi doesn’t limit performance scaling in general, there is a top limit also in performance in regard to pricing. However, we are talking about millions of users and millions of transactions. With these limitations we want to ensure fairness in some corner cases of growth of our clients. This is to ensure Olevi doesn’t get obsolete by some exceptionally rapid growing companies that migth consume Olevi in their own growth. This is also to protect other customers of Olevi from being denied the security of their own continuity.

Everything as a Code

In comparison to many authentication providers available in the cloud as a Service (SaaS), Olevi is as a code product. While SaaS services usually do very well what they promise, they do just that and nothing else. Scaling to customer needs in SaaS is based on client’s ability to accomodate themselves to the service.

To be clear, current cloud architectures make it possible to build setups so that even SaaS can be fitted to many needs. Also needs are often similar, so SaaS might be fit for choise in many occasions. Still, SaaS is run where provider decides. As stated before, Olevi can be run on many platforms. In lack of ready platform, Olevi reseller is glad to provide one.

Olevi sits well in those kind of needs where versatility is necessity. In many places in this document we state that Olevi is a code product. Olevi has been created with Everything as a code principle in mind. Olevi modules, CI/CD pipelines, configuration and even these documentation pages are created as a code.

This means that Olevi can be fitted in most demanding needs. If your need for authentication provider is very simple and your procedures are standard, choise of a SaaS purchase from some cloud provider might be best fit, while Olevi can provide to that as well. When your use case is more demanding, your architecture is difficult or you are in a state of transition between old and new or from blue to green, Olevi could be very good fit.

Local and esteemed provider

Olevi is produced by well known Finnish developers and supported by well known Finnish service providers. Olevi and our reseller speak your languages (Finnish and English), are easy going and easy to deal with. Our resellers and service providers make sure that their employees are very satisfied to their work. They commit only to clients and projects that share values and standards and are sustainable.

We tried very hard to not raise sustainability as a topic, but then it can’t be left without a mention. For us sustainabilitity is a part of everyday life in all our actions rather than empty promises.

To say again from another perspective something that was said already: we don`t do business in sanctioned areas. It is not nice, but it need to be said: like many global businesses do.

As you can run Olevi on instance of your choosing, Olevi can be run green. Green is not only how electricity is generated or where the datacenter is located, but how Olevi uses resources. From initial planning we wanted to implement things so that unnecessary computing cycles would be minimised.

One can run parallel instances of Olevi to improve availability. Our customers have chosen differently. We have made it so that Olevi instance is not only stable, but highly recoverable. Platforms very rarely fail, but when they do, Olevi fires up in seconds, not minutes. You don`t really need that redundant extra capacity running in vain. You can scale to fit.

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