What the Analysts Say about Centrify

Centrify has been working with major analyst firms to evangelize our vision for securing cross-platform IT environments by leveraging Active Directory for centralized identity and access management. Here is a sampling of recent analysts from Gartner and other analysts, along with links to webinars and podcasts in which they have collaborated with Centrify to explore the business and technical benefits of leveraging Active Directory.

Gartner: Centrify Is a "Right Vendor to Choose" for Active Directory Integration

Centrify's solution is "mature, technically strong, full featured, and possess(es) broad platform support.

Gartner is the leading IT analyst firm, focusing on the needs of Global 2000 enterprises. Gartner has recently begun to focus on what it has labeled "Active Directory bridge" products. Gartner concludes:

"Centrify's DirectControl product [is] being suggested for evaluation by those organizations looking for tight integration of their AD bridge and UNIX security products." … "Because Centrify provides a non-Windows administrative interface to enable the management of most AD bridge functionality from a web interface, this vendor will appeal to UNIX and Mac OS system administrators."

Gartner also sees the Centrify Suite as a strong UNIX security solution. Gartner noted the following about the Centrify Suite:

"[Centrify Suite delivers] tight integration of AD Bridge and UNIX security components (including Windows Group Policy); extensive bare-metal virtualization hypervisor support; excellent single sign-on (SSO) capabilities (via Kerberos); local PDP/PEP for high availability; event and keystroke auditing and reporting capabilities; and Mac OS X Server Support."

Sources

• "Active Directory Bridge Products: Getting More Value from the Windows Infrastructure" — Mark Diodati, February 2009
• "Providing a Strong Foundation: The Resurgence of UNIX Security Products" — Mark Diodati, Senior Analyst, June 3, 2009

Gartner Supports the Centrify Approach

Tools from ... Centrify can actually be more effective than sudo.

Ant Allan, Garner Analyst

Gartner is the most recognized name among IT analysts firms, and is particularly well known for its "magic quadrant" and "hype cycle" publications that try to provide structure and context for the various IT industry solution categories and solutions. No magic quadrant category exists for Active Directory-centric solutions for cross-platform identity and access management, but recent Gartner reports have called extending Active Directory to UNIX a "mainstream" industry approach. Some more examples:

"Using Active Directory for Unix administration and authentication reduces user repository complexity and simplifies the user sign-on experience."

Using Active Directory as an identity and authentication repository for Unix platforms is technically sound and can provide real benefits for end users and administrators.

"As the number of servers and applications to be managed increases, and multiple versions of UNIX operating systems must be supported, enterprises should strongly consider third-party solutions such as those offered by [Centrify]. These products use Active Directory as the unified repository for authentication information and constitute reduced sign-on solutions. Many of these products also extend the concept of group policy management to UNIX platforms. These tools help with the labor intensive aspects of rationalizing multiple UNIX host accounts with different user IDs and ID attribute syntaxes to a common scheme."

Sources

• "With Superuser Privileges Come Superuser Problems" — ServerWatch, November 10, 2009
• "Comprehensive Approach to Password Management and Single Sign-On" — Presentation by Gregg Kreizman, 2009 Gartner IAM conference
• "Active Directory and Unix Integration: Options for Reduced Sign-on and Administration" #00149425
• "Identity and Access Management Technologies Defined" #G00152051
• "Hype Cycle for Identity & Access Management Technologies, 2008" #G00158499
• "An Overview of Supplemental PC Life Cycle Management Tools" #00159527
• "Active Directory - Microsoft's Identity Hammer" — Presentation by John Enck, 2007 Gartner IAM conference

What Other Analysts Say

Here is a sampling of publications by other analysts writing about Centrify and its solutions.

"Centrify has successfully expanded into a more comprehensive identity management stack focused on administrators and high-risk users from identity consolidation."
"2010 Preview – Enterprise Security" — Presentation by Steve Coplan, Senior Security Analyst, The 451 Group.

"Solutions that help integrate Linux into an existing Windows Active Directory environment carry benefits from both an initial configuration and ongoing management perspective. Considering that staff-related costs such as support and system management typically account for 60-80 percent of total cost of ownership, a solution that integrates heterogeneous systems into a single infrastructure should offer value to customers."

"The Centrify recipe is simple: make the tools you already count on more productive by extending their reach and capabilities. Centrify layers its authentication, access control and auditing sauce on top of ubiquitous Active Directory to make this happen. This makes Centrify one of those rare companies that figured out how to add a whole lot of additional value without a lot of ripping, replacing, re-architecting or training."

"Centrify's DirectAudit fills an important role in securing systems from insider threats and demonstrating compliance to auditors. By tying UNIX and Linux system auditing into the established Microsoft management environment, Centrify further centralizes the administration of security and auditing in a way that increases the robustness of both."

• Enterprise Strategy Group White Paper: Centrify Adds Value to Active Directory — And the Business

"For enterprises using or considering Active Directory deployments, Centrify's DirectControl Suite can enable compliance and deliver high levels of business benefit and ROI."

"By integrating non-Microsoft systems with Active Directory, Centrify helps organizations comply more confidently with government regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, because enterprise security policies can be enforced across all of their distributed systems equally."

• Robert Frances Group White Paper: Using Microsoft Active Directory to Address Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Compliance in Heterogeneous Environments

"Centrify's solution helps make it possible for IT organizations to cost-effectively address compliance requirements across their heterogeneous environment in a manner that leverages their existing IT investments in technology such as Microsoft Active Directory."