BMC rolls out new additions to identity suite

BMC Software last week expanded its identity management suite with three products designed to help end users handle regulatory compliance and integrate identity data with other companies.

BMC Identity Compliance Manager, Identity Federation Manager and Identity Discovery, which supports integration of identity data with BMC's Configuration Management Database, represent the second of a three-step plan to create an identity management suite. that BMC hopes will be completed in 2006.

The company is banking on its Identity Management Suite 5.0 to provide users with tools for regulatory compliance, identity allocation and management, identity federation and integration of identity with network applications and business process workflows.

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BMC Software last week expanded its identity management suite with three products designed to help end users handle regulatory compliance and integrate identity data with other companies.

BMC Identity Compliance Manager, Identity Federation Manager and Identity Discovery, which supports integration of identity data with BMC's Configuration Management Database, represent the second of a three-step plan to create an identity management suite. that BMC hopes will be completed in 2006.

The company is banking on its Identity Management Suite 5.0 to provide users with tools for regulatory compliance, identity allocation and management, identity federation and integration of identity with network applications and business process workflows.

BMC earlier this year acquired Calendra for its provisioning technology and OpenNetwork for its Web access management software. That software now represents the first phase of the plan. The three new products, which represent the second phase, were all built from the ground up by BMC, including a common user interface and workflow engine that cuts across all phases of the identity suite.

"What they have done here is make things modular and have it sit on top of what is now a common architecture," says Jonathan Penn, an analyst with Forrester Research. "You buy any component and it uses the underlying technology like workflow engines and connectors and other technologies you don't have to buy with each component."

BMC competitors Computer Associates, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, RSA and Sun also face the integration challenge.

Identity Compliance Manager lets users set compliance policies based on user identities. The software also ensures that policies are implemented and it provides a validation feature that compares network activity against corporate compliance policies.

"Now managers have a process and a tool that allows them to keep the organization in good corporate compliance," says Somesh Singh, vice president of the identity management business unit at BMC.

BMC also is supporting identity sharing with its Identity Federation Manager, which allows identities to be shared across department or corporate boundaries. The software supports standard protocols Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 1.0, SAML 2.0, Liberty ID-FF 1.0 and Shibboleth, as well as WS-Federation, which is backed by IBM and Microsoft.

With Identity Discovery, BMC is integrating identity data into its Atrium Configuration Management Database. This lets users include data about users in addition to information about hardware, software and applications. The combination, BMC says, strengthens change and configuration by supplying information on specific end users and how they will be affected.

BMC prices its software on a usage basis with the starting price for Identity Federation Manager at $10,000 ($3 per user), Compliance Manager at $15,000 ($6 per user) and Identity Discovery at $60,000 ($15 per user).

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