CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
May 14, 2007
Product News
SAP Extends Identity Management Capabilities in SAP NetWeaver With Acquisition of MaXware
Delivering new solutions to help CIOs increase security in today's heterogeneous IT environments, SAP AG announced that it is extending the identity management capabilities in the SAP NetWeaver® platform. These enhancements come with the acquisition of MaXware, a privately held provider of identity management software. Building on SAP's knowledge and expertise in core business processes, the addition of new identity management capabilities in SAP NetWeaver will deliver an integrated platform to work across systems and across business processes, to manage identities and ensure security in real- time. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE® '07, SAP's international customer conference, being held in Vienna, Austria, May 14 - 16.
Improving security around information workers involved in one or more business processes is becoming increasingly important as companies move to the highly distributed environment of enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA). In addition to increasing security in an enterprise SOA, CIOs are looking to reduce the total cost of running IT through an integrated approach to assigning and administering user roles across many systems. As companies service-enable their applications, the combination of distributed enterprise services with powerful cross-system business processes requires that identities are managed in an integrated, straightforward and simple manner. By combining MaXware's proven, flexible and easy-to-configure identity management solution with SAP's industry-leading business applications and SOA- based platform, SAP can offer an identity management solution that increases flexibility and agility of business units when managing employee identities and when managing identities across company boundaries with customers, distributors or suppliers.
"Security ranks at the top of CIO agendas as they look to further improve security and control access, while lowering the administrative costs associated with managing identities," said Klaus Kreplin, corporate officer and member of the Executive Council, head of SAP NetWeaver Technology, SAP AG. "With the addition of MaXware capabilities, SAP will deliver to customers a lean, integrated and proven identity management solution for heterogeneous IT landscapes. This will be of tremendous benefit to both MaXware and SAP customers."
MaXware provides a comprehensive solution suite and a world-class professional services delivery team, helping companies optimize, integrate and evolve their current identity management processes. MaXware's virtualization and user provisioning technologies form the core of its identity management solution are built on an enterprise SOA and offer identity management as a service-providing scalable, real-time and standards-based access to identity information residing in multiple repositories. MaXware serves 300 customers worldwide in a diverse range of industries, such as technology, manufacturing, business services, defense, energy, healthcare, financial services and public sector. MaXware's corporate headquarters are in Trondheim, Norway, with sales subsidiaries in the United States and the United Kingdom.
"This is a very exciting time for MaXware customers, as they now have access to the global reach and deep solution offerings of SAP," said Stale Svenning, president and CEO, MaXware. "For our employees, this is also an exciting time as we look to new innovations and value we can collectively deliver to CIOs who are managing the heterogeneity of enterprise SOA landscapes."
The addition of MaXware complements SAP's business applications and platform and will enable customers to extend the value of their SAP investments. While the new MaXware capabilities in the platform will provide the functionality to centrally manage and provision identity information in SAP and heterogeneous environments, SAP GRC Access Control can deliver business value to the customer through its rich capabilities and content to support end-to-end compliance and risk management.
The acquisition of MaXware is continuing evidence of SAP's strategy to use well-placed, fill-in acquisitions to complement its broad solution offering by gaining innovative technologies while maintaining its successful organic growth track record. Integration planning is still underway for MaXware's offices and its 30 employees. The acquisition is expected to close May 2007. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Continuing Innovation in SAP NetWeaver
The addition of MaXware builds on the new innovations SAP is delivering in the platform this year. At SAPPHIRE '07 Atlanta, SAP unveiled the next wave of functionality in SAP NetWeaver aligned under four pillars: improved user access and productivity, accelerated application and business process composition, streamlined access to relevant and reliable information across the enterprise and automated governance of enterprise SOA. (See April 24, 2007 press release, titled "SAP Unveils Road Map for Next Wave of SAP NetWeaver Innovations.") Marking the first milestone in the roadmap, SAP announced that SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment (SAP NetWeaver CE), a next-generation set of standards-based and integrated composition tools, has been released to customers and partners for full production use. (See May 9, 2007 press release, titled "SAP NetWeaver® Composition Environment Ready to Power Companies' Enterprise SOA Applications."
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