BMC Software Supports SPML in CONTROL-SA Provisioning Product

BMC Software Enhances Provisioning Solution

Marked By Industry First, Enhancements Ease Provisioning Management Challenges

Houston, TX, USA. July 09, 2003.

BMC Software, Inc., a leader in enterprise management, today announced key enhancements to its user provisioning solution, CONTROL-SA. Dedicated to promoting open standards, CONTROL-SA will offer Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) based provisioning. SPML is an open standard defined by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) that allows supply chain partners to provision employees on each others' systems even when using different provisioning solutions. Additional enhancements to CONTROL-SA include the product's integration with Remedy, a leading provider of service management software, and a new interface that enables CONTROL-SA to leverage Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) connectivity.

Together, these new capabilities expand the functionality of CONTROL-SA, delivering a greater return on investment to customers through increased effectiveness and efficiency of their provisioning environment. Furthermore, these provisioning enhancements support BMC Software's recently announced Business Service Management initiative by assuring increased access to business services, applications and related data.

"When searching for a provisioning tool, we established three key requirements," said David Furnas, CISSP and Senior Enterprise Security Engineer, DeltaNet. "We needed a solution that supports industry standards and open interfaces like SPML integration to HRMS systems, provides integration to standard Help Desk systems, and offers an LDAP front-end that enables access to the back-end identity repository that integrates with our other directories. BMC meets all of these requirements with today's announcement, making CONTROL-SA a clear choice for our provisioning needs."

Open Provisioning

One of the most critical tasks of any identity management solution is managing the numerous requests for access that come into the average provisioning system each day. Whether the requests are generated by a human resource system or from a workflow system, provisioning infrastructures must be able to process these requests quickly and accurately. Equally important, the provisioning solution must be able to interact with today's diverse and complex identity management infrastructures. CONTROL-SA now answers these challenges through its open provisioning capability.

This new capability makes CONTROL-SA the only provisioning solution in the marketplace that allows multiple workflows to interact with the provisioning solution thereby providing customers with provisioning options to select the best workflow to meet their requirements. CONTROL-SA enables users today to seamlessly integrate into workflow environments from other leading vendors such as Business Layers, Oblix, PeopleSoft, and Remedy. In addition to affording customers the freedom of choosing the right workflow for their environment, CONTROL-SA's open provisioning initiative enhances the usability of their provisioning solution, and provides a foundation for ensuring secure identity management.

BMC Software will be demonstrating the open provisioning capabilities of CONTROL-SA at the Catalyst Conference in San Francisco on July 9, 2003. This demo will feature integration between CONTROL-SA and PeopleSoft's human resource (HR) provisioning component using the OASIS Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) standard. The SPML standard allows technologies to securely manage the identity lifecycle of a user -- including the dynamic allocation of their associated resources -- across a trusted boundary using a common language. The demonstration will also show CONTROL-SA's ability to engage with PeopleSoft's HR provisioning component while using SPML standards. These capabilities answer the need for integration and interoperability of disparate provisioning components.

Remedy Integration with CONTROL-SA/Passport

BMC Software is committed to significant integration between Remedy. Help Desk and its CONTROL-SA provisioning system. As part of this initiative, CONTROL-SA's first phase of integration with Remedy products will offer customers seamless integration with BMC Software's password solution, CONTROL-SA/Passport and Remedy Help Desk. This integration will increase customers' day-to-day efficiency and reduce the down time of users' accounts. In addition, the integration will allow automatic creation and management of Help Desk tickets for CONTROL-SA's password related actions. This will reduce problem resolution time and provide detailed reports and statistics of password related actions based on Help Desk Database tickets.

"Sixty-seven percent of internal help desk tickets filed by employees are related to password issues," said Rick Fitz, director of product marketing and product management for IT Service Management, Remedy. "Giving employees the proper tools to quickly resolve the majority of password issues not only increases employee productivity throughout the company, but also frees up a significant amount of the IT team's time."

LDAP Access for CONTROL-SA

As a final enhancement, BMC Software's CONTROL-SA solution will offer customers standard LDAP access to identity and security context already aggregated and managed by CONTROL-SA. By making this rich security context searchable via LDAP, CONTROL-SA allows Access Control and other LDAP-based applications to benefit from the identity information already managed inside of CONTROL-SA. This enhancement offers a flexible, industry standard interface and easily integrates into the existing directory environment.

The LDAP compatibility is delivered by combining RadiantOne Virtual Directory Server from Radiant Logic, Inc., a leading provider of directory software, with CONTROL-SA. BMC Software will offer a limited license of RadiantOne Virtual Directory Server as an OEM to all new CONTROL-SA customers and as part of a maintenance release to current customers.

"Customers deploying identity management can now have access to the deep organizational security that CONTROL-SA manages," said Michel Prompt, CEO of Radiant Logic. "This is a boon for Access Management vendors who can now leverage this information to define and enforce more flexible security policies."

"Based on the evolution of identity management and the needs of our customers, we've enhanced CONTROL-SA in a number of areas, making it more flexible, easier to use, and leveraging industry standards," said Steve Lesem, vice president, CONTROL-SA, BMC Software. "These new capabilities allow CONTROL-SA customers to utilize our unique architecture to easily provision users regardless of enterprise complexity while dramatically reducing their costs and time-to-value."

About CONTROL-SA

A centralized user provisioning product, CONTROL-SA allows security administrators to centrally manage and audit user access effectively. CONTROL-SA provides organizations with a secure, efficient and scaleable solution to ensure that employees and business partners have appropriate access to IT resources. For more information on CONTROL-SA visit http://www.bmc.com/solutions/security/.

About BMC Software

BMC Software, Inc., is one of the 10 largest software companies in the world and a leading provider of enterprise management solutions that empower companies to manage their IT infrastructure from a business perspective. Delivering Business Service Management, BMC Software solutions span enterprise systems, applications, databases and service management. Founded in 1980, BMC Software has offices worldwide and fiscal 2003 revenues of more than $1.3 billion. For more information about BMC Software, visit www.bmc.com.

Editor's Summary: "BMC Software today announced Enhancements to its provisioning solution, CONTROL-SA. CONTROL-SA will offer SPML-based provisioning, integration with Remedy, and LDAP connectivity. These new capabilities expand the functionality of CONTROL-SA delivering a greater ROI to customers through increased effectiveness and efficiency of their provisioning environment."

Contacts

Eric Krueger
BMC Software
Tel: +1 713-918-2153
Email: eric_krueger@bmc.com

[Source: http://www.bmc.com/corporate/nr2003/070903_1.html]

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See "OASIS Member Companies Host SPML Identity Management Interoperability Event." General references in "XML-Based Provisioning Services."

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SPML is an open standard defined by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) that allows supply chain partners to provision employees on each others' systems even when using different provisioning solutions. Additional enhancements to CONTROL-SA include the product's integration with Remedy, a leading provider of service management software, and a new interface that enables CONTROL-SA to leverage Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) connectivity. Together, these new capabilities expand the functionality of CONTROL-SA, delivering a greater return on investment to customers through increased effectiveness and efficiency of their provisioning environment. Furthermore, these provisioning enhancements support BMC Software's recently announced Business Service Management initiative by assuring increased access to business services, applications and related data. "When searching for a provisioning tool, we established three key requirements," said David Furnas, CISSP and Senior Enterprise Security Engineer, DeltaNet. "We needed a solution that supports industry standards and open interfaces like SPML integration to HRMS systems, provides integration to standard Help Desk systems, and offers an LDAP front-end that enables access to the back-end identity repository that integrates with our other directories. BMC meets all of these requirements with today's announcement, making CONTROL-SA a clear choice for our provisioning needs." Open Provisioning One of the most critical tasks of any identity management solution is managing the numerous requests for access that come into the average provisioning system each day. Whether the requests are generated by a human resource system or from a workflow system, provisioning infrastructures must be able to process these requests quickly and accurately. Equally important, the provisioning solution must be able to interact with today's diverse and complex identity management infrastructures. CONTROL-SA now answers these challenges through its open provisioning capability. This new capability makes CONTROL-SA the only provisioning solution in the marketplace that allows multiple workflows to interact with the provisioning solution thereby providing customers with provisioning options to select the best workflow to meet their requirements. CONTROL-SA enables users today to seamlessly integrate into workflow environments from other leading vendors such as Business Layers, Oblix, PeopleSoft, and Remedy. In addition to affording customers the freedom of choosing the right workflow for their environment, CONTROL-SA's open provisioning initiative enhances the usability of their provisioning solution, and provides a foundation for ensuring secure identity management. BMC Software will be demonstrating the open provisioning capabilities of CONTROL-SA at the Catalyst Conference in San Francisco on July 9, 2003. This demo will feature integration between CONTROL-SA and PeopleSoft's human resource (HR) provisioning component using the OASIS Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) standard. The SPML standard allows technologies to securely manage the identity lifecycle of a user -- including the dynamic allocation of their associated resources -- across a trusted boundary using a common language. The demonstration will also show CONTROL-SA's ability to engage with PeopleSoft's HR provisioning component while using SPML standards. These capabilities answer the need for integration and interoperability of disparate provisioning components. Remedy Integration with CONTROL-SA/Passport BMC Software is committed to significant integration between Remedy. Help Desk and its CONTROL-SA provisioning system. As part of this initiative, CONTROL-SA's first phase of integration with Remedy products will offer customers seamless integration with BMC Software's password solution, CONTROL-SA/Passport and Remedy Help Desk. This integration will increase customers' day-to-day efficiency and reduce the down time of users' accounts. In addition, the integration will allow automatic creation and management of Help Desk tickets for CONTROL-SA's password related actions. This will reduce problem resolution time and provide detailed reports and statistics of password related actions based on Help Desk Database tickets. "Sixty-seven percent of internal help desk tickets filed by employees are related to password issues," said Rick Fitz, director of product marketing and product management for IT Service Management, Remedy. "Giving employees the proper tools to quickly resolve the majority of password issues not only increases employee productivity throughout the company, but also frees up a significant amount of the IT team's time." LDAP Access for CONTROL-SA As a final enhancement, BMC Software's CONTROL-SA solution will offer customers standard LDAP access to identity and security context already aggregated and managed by CONTROL-SA. By making this rich security context searchable via LDAP, CONTROL-SA allows Access Control and other LDAP-based applications to benefit from the identity information already managed inside of CONTROL-SA. This enhancement offers a flexible, industry standard interface and easily integrates into the existing directory environment. The LDAP compatibility is delivered by combining RadiantOne Virtual Directory Server from Radiant Logic, Inc., a leading provider of directory software, with CONTROL-SA. BMC Software will offer a limited license of RadiantOne Virtual Directory Server as an OEM to all new CONTROL-SA customers and as part of a maintenance release to current customers. "Customers deploying identity management can now have access to the deep organizational security that CONTROL-SA manages," said Michel Prompt, CEO of Radiant Logic. "This is a boon for Access Management vendors who can now leverage this information to define and enforce more flexible security policies." "Based on the evolution of identity management and the needs of our customers, we've enhanced CONTROL-SA in a number of areas, making it more flexible, easier to use, and leveraging industry standards," said Steve Lesem, vice president, CONTROL-SA, BMC Software. "These new capabilities allow CONTROL-SA customers to utilize our unique architecture to easily provision users regardless of enterprise complexity while dramatically reducing their costs and time-to-value." About CONTROL-SA A centralized user provisioning product, CONTROL-SA allows security administrators to centrally manage and audit user access effectively. CONTROL-SA provides organizations with a secure, efficient and scaleable solution to ensure that employees and business partners have appropriate access to IT resources. For more information on CONTROL-SA visit http://www.bmc.com/solutions/security/. About BMC Software BMC Software, Inc., is one of the 10 largest software companies in the world and a leading provider of enterprise management solutions that empower companies to manage their IT infrastructure from a business perspective. Delivering Business Service Management, BMC Software solutions span enterprise systems, applications, databases and service management. Founded in 1980, BMC Software has offices worldwide and fiscal 2003 revenues of more than $1.3 billion. For more information about BMC Software, visit www.bmc.com. Editor's Summary: "BMC Software today announced Enhancements to its provisioning solution, CONTROL-SA. CONTROL-SA will offer SPML-based provisioning, integration with Remedy, and LDAP connectivity. These new capabilities expand the functionality of CONTROL-SA delivering a greater ROI to customers through increased effectiveness and efficiency of their provisioning environment." Contacts Eric Krueger BMC Software Tel: +1 713-918-2153 Email: eric_krueger@bmc.com [Source: http://www.bmc.com/corporate/nr2003/070903_1.html] Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See "OASIS Member Companies Host SPML Identity Management Interoperability Event." General references in "XML-Based Provisioning Services."