Wednesday, 24 September 2008

IDC Names IBM Leader in Worldwide Identity & Access Management Software

Independent analyst firm IDC released a report this week ranking International Business Machines (IBM) top in its 2007 global report of vendors in identity and access management security software.

IDC ranked IBM as the overall revenue leader for the second straight year in 2007, growing its revenue by six percent from 2006 and further extending its lead ahead of the nearest competitor.

The report states the total worldwide revenue for identity and access management grew to more than 3.1 billion dollars in 2007 and due to strong demand for the software as an integral component of governance, risk, and compliance initiatives, IDC expects revenues to reach 5.3 billion dollars by 2012.

“Our identity and access management software integrated with security information and event management is a cornerstone of IBM’s approach to help customers achieve their company-wide security and compliance goals,” said Al Zollar, general manager, of IBM Tivoli Software.

“While superior technology and extensive integration are significant keys to IBM’s growth in this area, one must not overlook how these technologies are applied successfully in the context of business and IT processes. We are simply enabling our clients to apply security to these processes, so authorized users can access the right applications and information for the right business reasons.”

Parallel to this release of this report, IBM also announced the availability of the new IBM Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-On software, redesigned based on technology from IBM’s March 2008 Encentuate, Inc. acquisition.

The new software serves as a business productivity tool, freeing businesses and their employees from having to manage and recall multiple passwords. It supports a wide scope of computer use -- from traditional desktops, shared workstations and remote access -- while also helping to simplify organizations' compliance initiatives.