Build vs buy part I: complexities of building SSO and SCIM in-house

The text discusses the complexities of building Single Sign-On (SSO) and System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) features in-house for software as a service (SaaS) startups aiming to become Enterprise Ready quickly. It highlights the challenges faced with homegrown solutions, such as countless identity providers (IdPs) to be supported, differences in SAML and SCIM implementations across providers, and custom work to meet each customer's needs. The article argues that using WorkOS is a better financial decision than building SSO and SCIM from scratch due to reduced development and maintenance costs, faster onboarding experience for enterprise customers, and accelerated time to market for enterprise plans. It provides an overview of the development roadmap for both SSO and SCIM in three phases: supporting a single IdP, core IdPs (Okta, Entra ID, Google Workspace), and specialized IdPs (custom systems, ADFS, Shibboleth, etc.). The text also discusses the challenges faced during each phase, such as dealing with different interpretations of SAML spec across providers, managing SAML certificates, and handling data fragmentation for SCIM. It concludes by stating that building in-house solutions is expensive and requires constant support from a dedicated team, which can lead to technical debt and slow down core product development.

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