November 30, 2018 By Tim Brantner
Ben Lopez
Michelle Kaufman
3 min read

Big user access improvements deliver on a unified IBM Cloud platform

 

IBM Cloud is announcing some big user access improvements that will further unify the cloud platform into a more cohesive experience. The north-star themes you will see for this release are simplicity, speed, and consistency. Each of the enhancements packs a punch in these areas. For my TL;DR folks, you now have a single login experience, one console for access and user management, and one API key and token method to use across IBM Cloud. Let’s start with what you are going to notice first—logging in.

Single login experience

You asked, and we answered. You wanted one place to log in to IBM Cloud, regardless of whether you started in IBM Cloud or with classic infrastructure. Now, whether you have an upgraded account, whether you are using new Identity Access and Management (IAM)-enabled services or Cloud Foundry services, or whether you are using Iaas or PaaS, you can rejoice in the fact that you will have a single login experience at https://cloud.ibm.com going forward.

So go ahead! Log in and try it out!

 

One console for access and user management

We’ve heard your feedback that you want one place to manage multiple access management backends and that you want one UI that includes the ability to configure IBM Cloud IAM policies and classic infrastructure permissions. We are excited to deliver just that.

Here’s what you’ll see when you invite a user. Notice how you can assign access on one page to IBM Cloud resources that are IAM-enabled (including new capabilities for account management services), specific Cloud Foundry orgs and spaces, and even granular permissions to infrastructure across account, devices, network, and services categories.

In addition, we’ve delivered a single user management UI and abstracted the complexities of backend systems to produce an atomic and synced user system. Find users fast using the filter text box, by status, order by column, or by using the View by drop-down to specify account, Cloud Foundry orgs, or classic infrastructure.

One API key

Last but not least, as a developer, you wanted one API key to access all IBM Cloud APIs. Previously, you needed API keys for PaaS and different API keys for IaaS, which just didn’t make sense. So, we delivered IAM API keys and tokens to access both IBM Cloud and classic infrastructure. IAM Tokens work with both IBM Cloud services and Infrastructure services.

Also if you are using simple API Keys, they work with both IBM Cloud services and Infrastructure services using IBM Cloud IAM API Keys.

 

Continually improving the IBM Cloud user experience

Unifying our login, access management, user management, and API key experiences using the north-star themes of simplicity, speed, and consistency has delivered a much better experience for you as our users. We are excited about these new features, and this is just the first wave of improvements to come. Feel free to use the feedback button located on every page in IBM Cloud to provide feedback. Good or bad; we are listening. Lastly, we welcome you to join us on your hybrid and multi-cloud journey, and we look forward to constantly improving your experience with IBM Cloud.

 

Check out the new IBM Cloud platform experience

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