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KeystoneOps For UK trusts
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KeystoneOps vs Salamander / Ruler

A provisioning tool, or a platform that provisions.

Salamander Active Directory and Ruler are established MIS-to-directory provisioning tools — they create and tidy school accounts from your MIS. KeystoneOps Identity Lifecycle does the same joiner-mover-leaver automation, but as one product inside the platform that already holds your people, your SCR and your helpdesk — so there's no second system to license, integrate or reconcile.

To be fair to Salamander…

Salamander and Ruler have provisioned school accounts for years, with deep Active Directory features and a lot of field experience behind them. If MIS-to-AD provisioning is all you need and you're happy with the rest of your stack, a dedicated tool is a perfectly reasonable choice. The comparison below is for trusts that would rather not run — and pay for — provisioning as a separate vendor alongside everything else.

Side by side.

Feature
Salamander
KeystoneOps
What it is
A dedicated MIS → directory provisioning tool
✓ Provisioning built into a full operations platform
Pricing
Separate annual licence
✓ Included in your KeystoneOps licence
Joiner / mover / leaver
Yes — its core job
✓ Yes — pre-provision by lead time, mover reconcile, staged reversible leaver
Reconciliation dashboard
Varies by product
✓ Built in — leaver-still-enabled, joiner-missing, dormant, MFA-gaps, orphaned licences
On-prem Active Directory
Yes — mature
no edge claimed Yes — in-network write agent
Entra ID + Google
Yes (varies by product)
✓ Yes — Entra ID and Google Workspace
Inbound SCIM 2.0
Not typically
✓ Yes — be a SCIM target for Entra-driven provisioning
Safety model
Varies
✓ Simulation-first by default, per-school / per-minute caps, kill-switch, source-of-authority guard
Photo sync to directory
Varies
✓ Yes — MIS photos through to Entra and Google
Same record as HR / SCR / helpdesk
No — a separate system
✓ Yes — one Person record across the whole platform
Data ownership
Vendor tool
✓ Self-host, source included, full export on request
Field maturity
Years in UK schools
no edge claimed New entrant, 2026

Comparison reflects Salamander's public pricing + documentation as of 2026. We try to keep this current; if you spot something out of date, ping us at /contact.

See the 5-year cost for your trust.

The calculator pre-loads Salamander's typical pricing as the comparator. Toggle others on / off to model your actual stack.

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