IBM next month will extend the reach of its Directory Server and Directory Integrator across additional Linux hardware platforms when it adds versions for the IBM i-Series and p-Series servers.
But despite IBMs assertion that Directory Servers use of DB2 brings greater reliability to the open LDAP used in Linux, not all IBM users see Linux as enterprise-ready.
“We were looking to move our WebSphere boxes [to Linux], but we havent thought about running LDAP there. We probably wont mess with that. It has to be available all the time,” said Kirk Kness, vice president of T. Rowe Price Investment Technologies, a subsidiary of T. Rowe Price Group Inc., in Baltimore.
By June, IBM plans to add password interceptor support in its IBM Directory Integrator for Sun Microsystems Inc.s Sun ONE Directory, Novell Inc.s Novell eDirectory and IBMs Directory Server, according to officials in Research Triangle Park, N.C. IBM is also adding a connector to allow SAP AGs R/3 identity data to be shared with other applications.
IBM intends to extend support to other third-party directory products throughout the year, according to officials.
IBMs directory technologies provide a critical registry foundation for IBM Tivoli user management tools—especially Tivoli Identity Manager, Tivoli Access Manager and Tivoli Privacy Manager.
Kness, a Tivoli Access Manager user, said he believes the tool and its robust, scalable registry provides a “whole lot more” than just security. “We have all our users in one registry across all our business. Any application that comes along plugs directly into it. We solved the whole concept of identity management—entitlements, single sign-on and all that,” said Kness. Some 160 applications and 1.5 million users work with Tivoli Access Manager at T. Rowe Price.
“On our site, we want to show third-party content online to our 1 million customers. We know who those customers are, thanks to Access Manager, so we can put authorization on it only for those customers,” Kness said. “We can build a junction to that content without having to write one line of code. I only have to change a rule, and its done.”