Thor Technologies Launches Identity Management 8.5 Version
Weybridge – July 13, 2005 – Thor Technologies, the most experienced and proven provider of identity management solutions, today announced the launch of Xellerate(r) Identity Manager 8.5, the latest version of the company’s flagship software suite for identity management across the enterprise. This new version builds on Thor’s track record of innovation and success in meeting the identity management requirements of the most complex organisations.
Global 2000 organisations and public sector agencies are increasingly turning to Thor to prevent information security breaches and meet stringent regulatory requirements specifying tighter controls over user access to information, applications and systems. Because an enterprise-wide identity management deployment can impact thousands of applications and hundreds of thousands of user accounts, implementations can be complex and resource consuming.
The new features available in Xellerate Identity Manager 8.5 ease the implementation process, streamline implementation from production to deployment through a Web-based deployment management tool, bolster exception-handling processes and provide cost-effective evidence of compliance through graphical workflows.
“When evaluating identity management solutions, Thor’s Xellerate Identity Manager 8.5 provided a broad feature set that provides The Principal a low total ownership cost and an accelerated path to return on investment – two of the key criteria we used in conducting our search for a business-driven technology solution,” said Brian Robbins, senior IT analyst, Principal Financial Group.
“Xellerate helped us solve the myriad challenges involved in the successful deployment of what has become an enterprise-wide and highly strategic initiative for our company that will ultimately benefit our customers and shareholders.”
The key advancements pioneered in 8.5 represent input and requirements from Thor’s customer base of Global 2000 organisations, spanning industries from financial services, manufacturing, automotive to professional services. The new features were built in response to direct experiences, customer and partner feedback over the course of highly successful, enterprise-wide deployments.
In addition to numerous incremental functionality, architectural enhancements and platform-support upgrades, 8.5 delivers the following significant new features to enable successful solution delivery across the enterprise:
* Deployment Manager: Building on powerful deployment-management tools available in earlier releases, Xellerate Identity Manager 8.5 provides a robust, full-featured and Web-based Deployment Manager. Deployment Manager enables intuitive change management of high-value system metadata, promoting migration of configured rules, policies, workflows, resource adapters and other information from development to quality assurance and finally to production environments. This capability is critical to ensuring that change control is correctly and cost-effectively enforced. In addition, post-development rollouts can proceed rapidly with minimal additional quality assurance checks for changes to resource definitions, approval and provisioning workflows and business rules.
The new version of the Deployment Manager has also been enhanced to support collaborative development environments. Based on a deep understanding of the development environments preferred by the largest companies in the world, the Deployment Manager has been enhanced to support multiple users combining efforts to work on workflows, rules, policies, adapters, and all of the other elements that eventually get aggregated and deployed together. This type of support empowers Thor’s clients to leverage SMEs within the organization and meet aggressive time-to-delivery targets without compromising security or functionality.
* Graphical Workflow: In response to client demand, version 8.5 delivers the ability to render approval and provisioning workflows in an intuitive graphical interface. This capability allows workflow developers to quickly ascertain whether they have modeled provisioning and user-approval processes correctly, especially when evaluating against exception case flows. Critically, it also provides for rapid executive and auditor insight into the handling of exceptions, rejection workflows and other non-standard behaviors. It is a valuable tool for documenting the processes being established in the system, by inclusion in design documents and archival into source control systems. It provides an easy way to transfer knowledge between teams over the lifetime of the project. Lastly, it serves as auditable, documentary evidence of critical elements of overall security policy, enabling & reducing the cost of ongoing compliance. Unlike other solutions on the market, which offer elementary workflow capabilities that display the “best-case” scenario in a rudimentary fashion, Xellerate provides real-world value through rich visual information based on UI standards.
“The launch of Xellerate Identity Manager 8.5 is a key catalyst for meeting Thor’s target of powering the largest number of successful enterprise identity management deployments by the end of 2006,” said John Aisien, vice president of marketing and business development for Thor. “The launch builds on Thor’s reputation as the best provider for ensuring rapid, successful implementations of identity management initiatives for blue-chip clients worldwide.”
Xellerate Identity Manager 8.5 is available as of August 2005 for new and existing customers.
About Thor Technologies, Inc.
Thor Technologies provides comprehensive identity-management solutions to meet the security and compliance needs of large, complex organisations. Thor’s open and standard-based Xellerate(r) software manages user-access rights and privileges throughout the provisioning lifecycle and across heterogeneous IT environments, including all platforms, systems, applications and physical assets. With unrivaled enterprise-wide provisioning capabilities, leading-edge customers, blue-chip partners and a team of seasoned domain experts, Thor delivers proven identity management solutions that reduce security risks and administrative costs, driving real and immediate business and IT benefits to the organization. Thor works with companies such as Lehman Brothers, MphasiS and Nextel Communications and counts Accenture, BearingPoint, BEA Systems and RSA Security among its strategic partners. The company can be found on the Web at www.thortech.com.