Symphony to develop BMC's security solns

BANGALORE, INDIA: Symphony Services, a provider of global product engineering services, announced it will provide future support services for BMC’s existing authorization and authentication solutions, web access manager (WAM) and identity federation manager (IFM), while developing, maintaining and supporting the next generation of the award-winning software. 

Symphony’s world-class product development team has released a new, updated Java-based version of WAM/ IFM recently. Symphony also plans to deliver by Q4 2008, an updated .NET version of the software as part of its strategic, long-term roadmap to ensure WAM/IFM continues to be a critical component of customers’ multi-layered security strategy.

Symphony will also work closely with WAM/IFM customers to create a client advisory board to serve as a liaison between Symphony’s dedicated development team and the market. The board will play a central role in ensuring future WAM/IFM versions continue to address customer needs. 

Over 60 enterprise customers currently rely on BMC’s WAM as a critical solution to secure web- based applications against attack. Symphony’s Product Line Management (PLM) Group will develop, test and support a new WAM software product, starting with the September release.

Symphony’s PLM Group will also lead WAM/IFM licensing and maintenance contracting for the new product, and serve as the central point of contact for customer support issues.

WAM is a comprehensive, standards-based web access management solution that helps companies address identity and access management challenges. WAM allows for central management of disparate internal and external users, as well as their individual access privileges to resources that reside across IT environments.

The solution includes configurable audit and access logging features to meet today’s aggressive regulatory compliance and user privacy requirements. Harnessing the power of a federated security approach, IFM provides infrastructure that enables identities and relevant entitlements to be propagated across security domains.

Symphony’s assumption of near- and longer-term product engineering for WAM comes at a time when the market for authorization and authentication solutions continues to grow. Leading industry analysts – who estimate that the worldwide market will exceed $3 billion by 2009 - point to the increased incidences of security vulnerabilities and identity theft as the major drivers for corporate deployments of front-end security solutions for Web-based applications. 

Longer Term Product Vision: Embracing Java and .NET

Symphony has released the new Java-based version of WAM/IFM and is finalising the .NET version to ensure Microsoft-centric IT environments can leverage the full IT security benefits of the software.

Symphony’s standing as a Microsoft Gold Partner uniquely positions it to engineer a long-term WAM/IFM product vision that meets the most pressing IT security concerns for Microsoft-centric IT organisations across the vertical spectrum.