Access360 Unleashes New Resource Manager

Access360, which has recently opened up a regional hub in Singapore, is introducing a new type of software that addresses a very specific, but important need -- managing employee user rights and access to company resources.

Called enRole, the server software acts as a policy-driven, centralized RPM (resource provisioning management) system.

"It assigns and changes various access rights to IT resources such as databases, applications, and e-mail for corporate users, and it provides a fast way to unplug access rights when an employee is leaving or a partnership is ending," said Joshua Mony, director, Asia-Pacific, Access360.

"Typically, an organization will have a large number of systems and many temporary contractors," Mony said.

"Managing all the access privileges of so many transient people bogs down IT administrators."Mony noted that as a result of such difficulties, about 30 percent of all user IDs within an organization are redundant, causing a lot of security holes and making it difficult to do a system audit.enRole manages the problem by giving centralized control of all system resources and automating the process of granting and rescinding system rights.

"enRole works together with other system management software, but focuses on offering a single point of control for these access rights," said Bryan Tan, general manager, South Asia, Access360. "An administrator can then have centralized control of diverse resources, reducing administration costs."Key to enRole's success are the various agents sitting in an organization's various computer systems, which act as middlemen between the enRole server and those systems.

"These agents let enRole talk to those systems," said Tan. "Currently we can manage over 40 systems with our agents including Oracle, DB/2, Sybase, and SAP R/3."By implementing a collection of agents, enRole can be connected into whichever systems a company needs for provisioning, eliminating the need for restructuring.

Access360 is in the process of creating more agents, but also has a toolkit for users to customize agents for in-house applications.

"For people who leave, enRole notifies agents to update user access and directories, eliminating redundant user IDs," Tan added.

Beyond just password provisioning, Access360 envisions a time when every single resource from swipe cards and passwords to PC access and corporate credit cards can be defined and managed via enRole.

"There is no reason why inventory management systems shouldn't be linked to enRole," said Tan.

Access360 currently is working on a couple of pilot programs in Singapore. It has four people in Singapore and plans to work with the big five consulting companies.

According to the Yankee Group, this resource provisioning market is expected to hit US$7 billion by 2004.

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