Novell Releases Access Manager 3.1 With Support For WS-Federation

Novell has announced a new version of its access management solution. Novell Access Manager 3.1 now offers built-in support for WS-federation, a single sign-on feature typically offered in supplementary federated identity products.

Leveraging Novell’s technical collaboration with Microsoft, Novell Access Manager 3.1 offers support for WS-Federation, one of the WS standard set of interoperable access and authentication standards, allowing organisations to easily and securely share business data in mixed-source IT environments. As a result, Novell Access Manager enables IT security administrators to grant non-Windows directory users, partners or organisations, single sign-on access to Microsoft Web-based products such as Microsoft Office SharePoint.

Joe Long, general manager in the Identity and Security Division at Microsoft, said, “We are pleased to work with Novell to address identity management interoperability needs, while enabling more secure collaboration within, and between organisational boundaries”.

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In today’s heterogeneous IT infrastructure, identity information is often stored in multiple locations and application-specific identity stores, such as Microsoft Active Directory - the identity store for authenticating users to Microsoft Office SharePoint. Novell Access Manager leverages WS-Federation to provide single sign-on for users that are not primarily located in Microsoft Active Directory.

“Organisations typically have more than one directory where identity information is stored,” said Jim Ebzery, senior vice president and general manager for Identity and Security Management at Novell. “Access Manager securely, and simply facilitates the user authentication process between Web-based applications that use disparate identity stores, so you don’t have to spend hours syncing your identity information.”

Novell Access Manager provides a secure and simple way to federate identities from any LDAP directory into a Microsoft infrastructure, eliminating the need to purchase a separate identity federation product. This cost and time-saving feature is important for organisations that need an access management solution that supports a broad range of platforms and directory services in complex multi-vendor computing environments.