Novell Identity Manager 4 Unifies Identity and Access Management for Physical, Virtual and Cloud Environments

AMSTERDAM, May 19 /PRNewswire/ --  Novell BrainShare Europe -- Novell today unveiled Identity Manager 4, a unique family of solutions that securely manages identity and access across physical, virtual and cloud environments. Novell® Identity Manager 4 is the industry's first solution to ensure consistent identity, security and compliance policies for an organization's entire IT ecosystem, including offering the same level of trust in the cloud that exists in the data center. As a result, customers and partners can better protect their corporate data while reducing the cost and complexity of demonstrating compliance.

Business models such as distributed management, outsourcing and on-demand software and computing, such as SaaS, make today's IT ecosystem complex. Managing data and transactions on-premise and off-premise, combined with increasing regulatory requirements, calls for organizations to have a holistic view of who has access to what resources to ensure compliance.  Novell addresses this core problem by enabling centralized user provisioning, roles management and secure access to resources and applications - whether in the data center or in the cloud.

Novell Identity Manager 4 is another milestone in Novell's delivery of products to meet the growing demand for intelligent workload management solutions. Intelligent workload management enables organizations to securely manage and optimize heterogeneous computing resources across physical, virtual and cloud environments.

"The emergence of virtual and cloud-driven business models has created new challenges around identity and access management. CIOs need a consistent, extensible platform for managing identities inside and outside the walls of their enterprise -- or their cloud strategy will fail," said Ron Hovsepian, CEO of Novell. "Novell Identity Manager 4 delivers a secure, cloud-ready platform to address this challenge so customers can benefit from intelligent workload management."

The beta program for Novell Identity Manager 4 is already underway, with more than 50 large customers and partners worldwide actively participating.

"Novell Identity Manager is the foundation for providing sustainable security and compliance in today's distributed computing environments," said Steven Jones, director of Operational Risk, Synovus. "For example, we use Identity Manager to synchronize and manage more than 6,700 identities across our IT environment. When a user changes roles or moves from one location to another, their access rights are updated automatically, giving our users unimpeded, secure and compliant access to the resources they need to do their jobs. Novell is setting the industry standard for secure, interoperable and compliant identity management."

Novell Identity Manager 4 family has two distinct offerings

Every customer has a unique identity management challenge. Novell now offers two products that address specific needs:

• Novell Identity Manager 4 extends the capabilities of Novell Identity Manager 3.6 to include enhanced scalability and tight integration with Microsoft* SharePoint*, SAP* ERP systems and cloud applications including Salesforce.com and Google Apps. It also offers out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and tools for data cleansing and policy framework design.
• Novell Identity Manager 4 Advanced Edition redefines enterprise-grade user provisioning by integrating sophisticated roles management, advanced workflow capabilities, and intelligent reporting capabilities. It is designed to support the identity and compliance needs for the most advanced enterprise or managed service provider. Novell Identity Manager 4 Advanced Edition also includes tools for data cleansing, policy framework design and the ability to define roles and entitlements using a simple drag and drop functionality, eliminating the need to write code.

Novell's broad partner ecosystem are already demonstrating support for Novell Identity Manager 4, including ACS, Atos Origin, Deloitte, ILANTUS, Infosys, KPMG, Mycroft and Wipro. Accordingly, Novell is investing heavily in training both value-added resellers and consulting systems integrators.

"Organizations worldwide are enhancing their identity infrastructure to provide the foundation of a secure and compliant environment within the enterprise and the cloud," said Lyle Carlson, director, Deloitte & Touche LLP.  "Through our relationship with Novell and our joint efforts meeting the needs of these very large companies, the paramount issues associated with security and identity can now be addressed.  Novell helps us to bring these together in a way that will help us deliver optimal value to our customers with a solution that is well designed, well architected and functions as intended."

Helping Enterprises be more Intelligent, Cloud-Ready and Secure

The Novell Identity Manager 4 family of solutions helps Novell customers become more intelligent, cloud-ready, and secure.  

Intelligent -- Novell Identity Manager 4 helps enterprises gain intelligence about operations by providing unmatched visibility into user access.  With integrated role management and workflow, it reduces costs while empowering business users to define and control who has access to what.  This greatly reduces the time it takes to get users provisioned and allows for more disbursed and robust oversight into user entitlements.  At the same time, generating actionable and meaningful reporting from identity management solutions is a core customer requirement.  Identity Manager 4 sets the benchmark for the industry with an integrated framework that provides both current and historical reports on provisioning activity so customers can more easily meet compliance requirements with reports that show who provided access to whom and when.

Cloud-Ready -- The shift to virtualized and cloud computing has fundamentally altered the identity management landscape as security and policy management controls no longer live neatly within the firewall.  Novell Identity Manager 4 offers the scalability and high-availability required of large-scale deployments by providing seamless, real-time user provisioning/deprovisioning, request/approval processes, password changes, identity profile updates and reporting.  With these unique solutions, customers can count on Novell Identity Manager as their source of record as they take advantage of new computing paradigms, including common SaaS applications such as Google Apps or Salesforce.com.

"IAM ensures appropriate access to resources across heterogeneous technology environments. This is a crucial and increasingly business-aligned undertaking for any enterprise — particularly due to increasingly rigorous compliance requirements — and requires business skills, not just technical expertise," writes Ant Allan, analyst, Gartner. "Enterprises that develop mature IAM capabilities can reduce the cost of managing users' identities and entitlements and, more importantly, become more agile in supporting new business initiatives and contributing to profitability."(1)

Secure -- Security is a core driver for implementing an identity management solution. Organizations need to secure data while still allowing users the required levels of access.  Novell Identity Manager continues to be the only solution uniquely architected for real-time response across multiple environments which practically eliminates security holes due to delayed de-provisioning.  Enhancements to Identity Manager 4 include tools to ensure that enterprise security policies are consistent across different systems, eliminating a common source of security and compliance problems.  With a tightly integrated view of identity across the enterprise, the Novell Identity Manager 4 family of solutions provides the foundation for the sophisticated security required by today's threats.

Availability

Novell Identity Manager 4 is currently in beta now through July.  Companies interested in participating can request information here.  The product family will be commercially available in Q3 2010.  

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL), a leader in Intelligent Workload Management, helps organizations securely deliver and manage computing services across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments.  We help customers reduce the cost, complexity, and risk associated with their IT systems through our solutions for identity and security, systems management, collaboration and Linux based operating platforms. With our infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, Novell integrates mixed IT environments, allowing people and technology to work as one. For more information, visit www.novell.com.  

Novell is a registered trademark of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries.  *All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

(1)  Gartner, Inc. Key Issues for Identity and Access Management, 2010, Ant Allan, Gregg Kreizman, March 1, 2010.

SOURCE Novell, Inc.