October 13, 2009

SAP and Novell expand governance partnership

The companies are offering tighter integration among products

SAP and Novell announced at TechEd today an expansion of their partnership with a focus on GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) issues. The move combines SAP's business process background (including elements from the BusinessObjects portfolio, which SAP acquired in 2007) with Novell's security and compliance expertise to provide a full GRC solution.

The companies say they have received a lot of feedback from customers and joint partners on GRC issues, which was the impetus for expanding the partnership. Novell Compliance Management Platform extension for SAP environments, Novell Identity Manager, and Novell Sentinel are presently SAP-certified for integration, and the companies plan to roll out a second wave in the next six months based on feedback from customers and partners as to which products need to be integrated.

[ Last week, SAP and HP announced plans to deepen their BI ties. ]

To show how the GRC solutions will work, Jay Roxe, director of solution marketing, identity, and security at Novell, gave the example of segregation of duties violations. "Individuals shouldn't have the ability to both write and approve checks," Roxe said. "If people were granted those permissions in different parts of the system, it would trigger a notification that somebody had been granted invalid access and pass it up to be remediated." In this way, Roxe said, companies can take a preventative stance and sniff out violations before they become a problem instead of having to be in reactive mode and dealing with issues after they arise.

The big-picture goal for SAP and Novell is to simplify GRC by helping companies eliminate resource silos and inefficiencies by automating both the discovery and remediation of compliance issues. In these economic times, a lot of companies could use some of that.

White Paper

D2D Virtual Tape Library Replication Primer

This whitepaper explains the terminology and concepts behind Data Replication technologies and establishes some sizing rules through worked examples. Learn the new paradigm in disaster tolerance—protect data anywhere.

Download now »

White Paper

An Alternative to Virtualization for Datacenter Cost Savings

Server virtualization is a popular option for dealing with mounting datacenter costs. Another equally promising approach is the use of an Application Delivery Controller. Citrix NetScaler provides a low-cost way for organizations to reduce their server count and accrue cost savings from a reduction in space, cooling, power and personnel.

Download now »

White Paper

Why Your Firewall, VPN, and IEEE 802.11i Aren't Enough to Protect Your Network

The emergence of WLANs has created a new breed of security threats to enterprise networks.

Included in HP ProCurve WLAN solutions is security technology that alleviates threats from WLANs through:
* Monitoring wireless activity inside and out of the enterprise
* Classifying WLAN transmissions into harmful and harmless
* Preventing transmissions that pose a security threat to the enterprise network
* Locating participating devices for physical remediation

Download now »

White Paper

Bringing the Edge to the Data Center

Effectively address data protection challenges, implementing solutions that help store and protect business–critical data while cutting costs and improving efficiency and reliability.

Download now »

Sign up to receive Applications Resource Alerts

Subscribe to the Today's Headlines: First Look Newsletter

Find out what will be news for the day, with our first-thing-in-the-morning briefing.

White paper

Turn Your IT Department into a Lean Machine

Like any valuable resource, IT is a terrible thing to waste. But by applying the same lean techniques that have been used to streamline manufacturing processes, IT departments can reduce costs, improve performance and better manage resources.

Download now! »

Podcast

Economy Makes Automation a Must-Have Tech for 2009

Stephen Elliot, vice president of strategy for CA's Infrastructure Management and Data Center Automation business unit, explains why difficult economic times drive the need for simplified management capabilities and advanced automation tools.

Listen now! »

White paper

What You Need to Know About Virtual Infrastructure Management - Now

According to a recent study CA conducted with 300 CIOs and top IT executives, 64 percent of respondents say they've already invested in virtualization, and the other 36 percent reported that they plan to invest in virtualization.

Download now! »

Webcast

Leveraging Virtualization and Process Automation

In this video learn about process automation in a virtualized world. How CA and VMware are enabling enterprise datacenter automation.

View now! »
©1994-2009 Infoworld, Inc.