IBM announced details of new identity software designed to help clients securely manage employee, partner and customer IT users and their access to company applications and information.

The new release of IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager software further simplifies the sharing of data between trusted parties -- such as business partners or separately managed divisions within an organization -- with secure application integration and single-sign on technology. With it, users can sign-on to a corporate Web site once and then obtain seamless, secure access to applications both inside and outside of their IT network. 

IBM, the current leader in Identity and Access Management software revenue, according to analyst firm IDC (1), bolsters its existing portfolio with this new release that provides extended interoperability with several open industry standards and other vendors’ software. This interoperability provides clients with an even greater opportunity to benefit from IBM federated identity management software in existing IT environments, within an organization or between business partners, comprised of software with various configurations and from different vendors.

For example, a healthcare provider that provides services to its members on-line can use federated identity management to easily link to business partners, like a prescription service or medical supplies company, to provide additional services on its Web site. By helping reduce the need for business partners to develop new authentication applications or manage the member user identities, the healthcare provider can create new business opportunities and provide easy access to more information and services for its patients. Members can sign-on once to the healthcare provider’s Web site and seamlessly travel to additional partner sites without having to register or sign-on again.

With Web-based integration and open standards, IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager can help increase the flow of information, provide quick gains in user productivity, minimize IT development, administration and support costs, and speed deployment of new applications and the linking of applications together.

Enhanced Software Interoperability Provides Quick Start
The benefits of federated identity management can be achieved when different types of legacy, proprietary and open software are seamlessly integrated together. IBM continues to work closely with standard organizations and other software vendors to drive support for identity standards and improved software interoperability.

The new IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager now provides businesses the ability to integrate leading user-centric identity management technology and frameworks, including OpenID and Information Card Profile Identity Selectors such as Microsoft Windows CardSpace and Eclipse’s Higgins Identity Frameworks. 

User-centric identity management provides a means of managing identity transactions that enable individual users to have control over what information they share to identify themselves, rather than traditionally relying on shared data between an identity provider and a service provider. Similar to a driver’s license or passport, the user is able to show identification claims when a situation requires it. As these approaches become more prevalent, IBM software enables organizations to bring these identities into one central, federated identity management system.

IBM’s new federated identity management software also supports a wide range of open standards including SAML 2.0, WS-Security, WS-Trust, WS-Federation and Kerberos, as IBM continues to lead the way in support and interoperability with commonly used open technologies and frameworks.

Additionally, IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager, which bundles IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-business and IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment, substantially extends its interoperability in this new release by now working with third party Web access management solutions and application server software. This will help enable organizations to more readily and quickly adopt IBM federated identity management software and maximize their existing software investments.

“As a market leader in federated identity management, IBM’s ability to extend interoperability to other vendors of Web access management software, as well as the major open standards and user-centric identity management approaches, will help accelerate adoption of federated identity programs currently being assessed on a worldwide basis,” said Sally Hudson, research director within IDC's security products and services group.

IBM Software Eases SOA Identity Management
As businesses increasingly collaborate within their own independently managed divisions and with business partners and customers, they find themselves adopting service oriented architectures (SOA) that connect loosely coupled IT services to construct new applications.

An SOA allows for sharing of existing software applications, so companies can take advantage of new linkages and form new applications and business processes.  While reusing existing applications and Web services can dramatically reduce SOA implementation costs, these applications are often developed independently and have different formats to define, share and map user identities.

IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager’s built-in SOA Identity Service provides the ability to validate, manage and audit identities across a wide range of formats and vendors’ applications to help maintain identity context throughout use in an SOA. This provides clients with a simplified approach to connect and audit identities across shared applications in addition to potentially significant software application development and support savings.

“With substantially extended interoperability, IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager becomes even more appealing to clients looking to tie together various organizational and business silos and also simplify technology integration between their company and partners’ Web sites,” said Venkat Raghavan, director of product management, IBM Tivoli security, risk and compliance software. “With IBM software, companies can more easily drop-in federation to existing environments, helping to eliminate costs associated with lengthy product development cycles and the management of compliance initiatives, and simplify security administration by delivering security as a service across an organization’s SOA and with trusted partners.”

IBM's Tivoli security software helps prevent unauthorized access to valuable customer, employee and business data and facilitates compliance with corporate security policy and regulatory requirements. It is part of IBM's portfolio of service management software which automates some of the most challenging processes associated with managing complex IT environments, such as managing storage devices and deploying new software releases and patches. The software helps customers fight rising IT costs, manage constant change and meet the demand to stay competitive.

The new IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager will be generally available worldwide by the end of the third quarter of 2008.

(1) IDC, "Worldwide Identity and Access Management 2007-2011 Forecast and 2006 Vendor Shares," Doc # 207609, July 2007.

For more information on IBM contact Matthew Wyman, Matthew.Wyman@Text100.com at Text 100 Public Relations.