Digital Identity

What Digital Identity does

Digital Identity Ltd is a Manchester-based, UK-registered private limited company (Companies House No. 7121888) that supplies federated identity services to higher education institutions, small businesses and charities. The company is operated on a day-to-day basis by founder Pete Birkinshaw as a solo freelance IT consultant, with a stated headcount of 1-10, and has been delivering identity management consultancy, identity assurance, authentication and authorisation services for over ten years. Its commercial offering is anchored by Indiid, an identity provider service that issues accounts for secure login to other internet services and is currently focused on academic research users.

The technical core is a portfolio of open source Elixir and Ruby libraries released under MIT and Apache 2.0 licences via the Digital Identity Labs GitHub organisation, Docker Hub, Hex.pm and RubyGems. Flagship assets include Smee (SAML metadata processing with over 1,100 tests), SmeeFeds (federation management covering nearly 70 NREN federation sources), SmeeView (SAML metadata parsing), Shin (Shibboleth IdP admin API client), Ishigaki (a Shibboleth IdP container for Docker and Kubernetes, supporting AMD64 and ARM64), MDQT (MDQ commandline tool), YubikeyOTP, and the more recent ROR client for the Research Organization Registry. Together these tools operationalise Shibboleth, SAML, LDAP, CAS and MFA-based federated authentication for research and education networks.

Revenue is generated through three streams: professional consultancy services, bespoke software development, and commercial support for SaaS products and open source projects, the last delivered through the affiliated Mimoto company created in 2017 as a joint venture with Serotine Ltd. Pricing is not publicly disclosed, sales are primarily direct to institutional clients in higher education and to small organisations, and developer adoption is driven through self-serve open source distribution, technical content marketing via the 'Identity And Biscuits' blog, and conference participation at events such as TNC, REFEDS, UKEduCamp and Manchester Dev Con.

Name

Digital Identity

Legal name

Digital Identity Ltd

Website

https://digitalidentity.ltd.uk

Company type

Private

Founded year

2013

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Digital Identity Ltd is a Manchester-based, founder-operated consultancy that supplies federated identity services using Shibboleth, SAML, LDAP, CAS and MFA to higher education institutions, small businesses and charities, backed by an open source library portfolio and the Mimoto commercial support joint venture.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Identity and Access Management

NAICS

Custom Computer Programming Services (541511), Software Publishers (5132), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518210)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Computer Programming Services (7371)

akta.pro primary industry

Single Sign-On (SSO) & Federation (SAML/OIDC, Identity Providers) (HDAEAJAB)

akta.pro secondary industries

Identity & Access Management (SSO/MFA) for Education (EDAFALAI), Authentication (MFA/Passwordless/Biometrics) Platforms (BPAMAEAE), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) & Passwordless Authentication (HDAEAJAC)

Keywords

• Federated identity services
• SAML authentication solutions
• Shibboleth identity provider
• Identity management consulting
• Open source IAM tools

Headquarters

HQ city

Manchester

HQ country

United Kingdom

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Consultancy Services: Professional consulting services related to identity management, identity assurance, authentication, and authorisation. Provided for over ten years to higher education, small businesses, and charities.
2. Bespoke Software Development: Custom software development tailored to client identity management requirements.
3. SaaS Products (via Mimoto): Commercial support for Digital Identity's SaaS products and open source projects, provided through the affiliated company Mimoto.

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Digital Identity supplies federated identity services to higher education institutions, small businesses, and charities, centered on Shibboleth, SAML, LDAP, CAS, and MFA technologies. The company delivers consultancy and bespoke software development services, operates the Indiid SaaS identity provider for academic research users, and maintains an open source suite of Elixir libraries and Docker/Kubernetes containers (Smee, SmeeFeds, SmeeView, Shin, Ishigaki, MDQT, YubikeyOTP, ROR) used across research and education federations.

Product overview

Digital Identity Ltd provides federated identity services primarily to higher education, small businesses, and charities. The company's offerings include a SaaS identity provider (Indiid) and an extensive portfolio of open source Elixir libraries for SAML metadata processing. The core open source suite includes Smee (SAML metadata handling), SmeeFeds (federation management), SmeeView (metadata parsing), Shin (Shibboleth IdP admin API client), and Ishigaki (Docker/Shibboleth IdP container). These tools work together to enable organizations to manage federated authentication using Shibboleth, SAML, LDAP, CAS, and MFA standards. Commercial support and services are provided through Mimoto, a partner consultancy company.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Indiid: Identity provider service that provides accounts for logging in to other services on the Internet, currently focused on academic research users.
• Digital Identity Labs

Products and services

• Indiid Identity provider service that provides accounts for secure login to other Internet services, helping users log in securely and share only the information they want to share. Currently focused on academic research users.
• Smee Pragmatic Elixir library for handling SAML metadata. Provides tools for downloading, processing, filtering, validating, signature checking, XSLT transformation, and publishing SAML metadata with support for sources, entities, MDQ services, and MDQ-compatible API. Includes over 1100 tests as of late 2024.
• SmeeFeds Federation management extension to Smee for research, testing and development. Includes information about research and education federations (NRENs) and supports tags, JSON export/import.
• SmeeView SAML metadata parser extension for Smee providing easy-to-use functions for extracting commonly used information from SAML metadata as Elixir structs, based on functional data access lenses.
• SmeeLive Customised Docker container running LiveBook with Smee packages pre-installed, including demonstration notebooks for exploring Smee features interactively.
• Shin Elixir client for the Shibboleth IdP admin API, offering server metrics, reloading services, metadata queries, attribute release queries, service status checks, and simulated SAML assertion fetching.
• Ishigaki Docker container for Shibboleth Identity Provider, described as a base container for Docker, Kubernetes, and other container services. Available for both AMD64 and ARM64 platforms, based on Shibboleth IdP v5, Jetty, and Debian.
• MDQT Simple commandline tool for accessing MDQ services and working with local SAML metadata, distributed via RubyGems.
• YubikeyOTP Elixir library for validating Yubikey One Time Passwords (OTPs) against Yubico's validation service or custom servers, supporting two-factor authentication integration.
• ROR Unofficial Elixir client for the Research Organization Registry (ROR) API, providing lookup, search, and Quick Search functionality for research organization data.
• Identity Management Consultancy Professional consultancy services related to identity management, identity assurance, authentication, and authorisation, delivered to higher education, small businesses, and charities for over ten years.
• Bespoke Software Development Custom software development tailored to client identity management requirements, including Shibboleth IdP deployment, SAML integration, and MFA implementation.

Quantifiable outcome

• Over 1100 tests validate SAML processing libraries
• +1 more outcomes

Named customers2 records

Segments3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature9 records

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

• Mimoto (via Serotine Ltd)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2017In 2017, Digital Identity joined with Serotine Ltd to create Mimoto, a consultancy-focused company. Mimoto provides commercial support for Digital Identity's SaaS products and open source projects, and offers expanded service coverage for identity management consultancy.

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Broad incumbents

• Microsoft Entra ID: Microsoft's cloud identity platform providing SSO, federation and MFA, widely deployed in higher education. Comparable as a broad incumbent that many R&E institutions use in place of standalone Shibboleth deployments, defining the long-term competitive backdrop.
• Okta: Leading cloud identity and access management platform with broad SSO/MFA support, including SAML federation. Comparable as a larger incumbent providing federated identity to enterprise and increasingly R&E customers, representing competitive encroachment on the niche.
• GÉANT: European research and education networking consortium that operates eduGAIN and supports federated identity services across NRENs. Comparable as a pan-European federation umbrella under which Digital Identity's tools are deployed.
• Internet2 (InCommon): Operates InCommon, the US research and education identity federation built on Shibboleth/SAML. Comparable as a federation operator serving the same R&E Shibboleth ecosystem Digital Identity builds tools for.

Regional players

• SURF: Dutch cooperative for ICT in education and research, providing federated identity services (SURFconext) to Dutch institutions. Comparable as a European R&E federation operator with overlapping Shibboleth/SAML infrastructure.
• JISC: UK's digital, data and technology agency for higher education, operating the UK Access Management Federation and eduroam. Comparable as the dominant UK R&E identity ecosystem provider that Digital Identity's customers participate in.

Emerging players

• Gluu: Open source identity and access management platform with strong federation and SSO capabilities, often used in research and education. Comparable as a competing open source IAM option for R&E institutions evaluating alternatives to Shibboleth.
• Keycloak: Open source identity and access management platform providing SSO, OIDC, SAML and federation capabilities. Comparable as an open source IAM alternative that some institutions may use instead of Shibboleth-centric stacks.

Direct peers

• Unicon: US-based consultancy that provides Shibboleth identity and access management support, training, and custom development to higher education. Closely comparable to Digital Identity/Mimoto as a specialist Shibboleth services firm serving R&E.

Others

• REFEDS: Research and Education Federations group that develops policy, standards and community practice for federated identity. Comparable as the community/policy layer that defines the requirements Digital Identity's Shibboleth/SAML tooling must meet.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights5 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/digitalidlabs
• GitHubgithub.com/Digital-Identity-Labs
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/digital-identity-ltd

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Digital Identity