June 6, 2005
Mountain View, Calif.—Centrify Corporation today announced that it has added IBM AIX 5L™, IBM's enterprise Unix operating system, to the supported Unix and Linux platforms for its DirectControl™ suite. DirectControl is an identity, access and Group Policy management solution that extends the capabilities of Microsoft® Active Directory® for mixed Microsoft Windows®, Unix® and Linux® environments, as well as Java™ and web-based applications. Centrify has also become a member of PartnerWorld®, IBM's worldwide organization for business partners.
"Customers depend on IBM AIX® for its reliability and scalability, and Centrify is now able to offer them the ability to streamline their user administration with Microsoft Active Directory, the most pervasive Directory Services platform in the enterprise," said David McNeely, Director of Product Management, Centrify. "By extending Active Directory to include AIX, Centrify provides users with a single sign-on and administrators with centralized authentication, authorization and access control for AIX."
Centrify has written to IBM's model for snapping in authentication modules to AIX to ensure that DirectControl meets IBM's standards for a compliant, reliable means of integrating AIX with Active Directory. Centrify DirectControl is composed of two easy-to-install architectural components. The first is the DirectControl Agent that administrators install on an AIX server. The Agent allows an administrator to "join" that system to their Active Directory domain, providing authentication and authorization services and enforcing Active Directory's robust security policies. The second component is the DirectControl Administrator Console, a suite of Windows-based utilities (including extensions to the Active Directory Users and Computers user interface) that allow an administrator to enable Active Directory users to access an AIX system and Java-based web applications using their Active Directory account credentials. In effect DirectControl makes an AIX server an Active Directory "client" thereby allowing a system administrator to control access to that system and configure it through Group Policy using the same tools and processes that are used to manage Windows systems.
DirectControl helps address top security concerns such as enforcing consistent password policies across the enterprise and eliminating the security risk of orphan accounts. An additional benefit is that DirectControl enables centralized authentication auditing and provides authorization reporting required to show compliance with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA. By consolidating all user account management in Microsoft Active Directory, an organization is able to extend Active Directory's benefits to AIX without increasing administrative overhead.
Price and Availability
Support for IBM AIX 5L, HP-UX, Sun Solaris, Debian, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Novell SUSE Linux, Apple's Mac OS X, and VMware is included in the DirectControl suite. DirectControl is licensed beginning at $50 per workstation and $300 per server.
About Centrify
Centrify is a leading provider of Active Directory-based identity, access and Group Policy management solutions for Windows, Unix, Linux, Java and web platforms. With its DirectControl suite, Centrify enables IT organizations to fully leverage Active Directory to significantly reduce administrative costs, strengthen security, improve end-user productivity, and comply with regulatory requirements. Founded in March 2004, Centrify is headquartered in Mountain View, California. To request an evaluation of the Centrify DirectControl suite, call (650) 961-1100. www.centrify.com.
Centrify and DirectControl are trademarks of Centrify Corporation. IBM, PartnerWorld, AIX and AIX 5L are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
About 50 of the Macs in question are deployed internationally, including Bangkok, Thailand. "With Centrify, we'll know who logs in and be able to protect resources accordingly," said [Habitat for Humanity CIO Jim] Thie. "Secondly, we wanted something that integrated easily into the Active Directory structure. And thirdly, we wanted something that was easy to deploy. I would say we're achieving all three of those with Centrify."
Kevin Ferguson,
SearchWinIT.com
May 11, 2006