IBM Rolls Out First Phase Of Compliance Package

The suite of tools, the first in a series of integration packs that will be released over the year, will integrate Consul technology with the identity management family of Tivoli products, said Kris Lovejoy, director of Tivoli strategy at IBM and former CTO of Consul.

"That's the first off the block, within the next two months or the beginning of Q3," Lovejoy said of the first phase of a major compliance control automation and management offering, which is slated to be announced Tuesday at IBM's PartnerWorld conference in St. Louis.

The software starts at $24 per user, with a three-tier price structure also in place and volume discounts available, Lovejoy said.

About a dozen or so IBM Business Partners and carry-over Consul customers have already incorporated the compliance auditing package in their service management offerings, said Paul Weitkemper, worldwide channel manager for Tivoli security.

"We have a long line waiting for this. We expect partners enabled on this to grow to 30 at least by the end of 2007," Weitkemper said.

The integration is part of a project to offer a complete package of Tivoli compliance process automation across networks that can be monitored, measured and managed with the Consul technology, Lovejoy said.

"What we're attempting to achieve is a set of solutions that allow organizations to not simply automate controls for basic compliance management but also give them the power to manage those controls and learn what's working and what isn't," she said.

Solidcore Systems, an IBM Business Partner with Ready-for-Tivoli certification, aims to test-drive the new tools, said Bob Vieraitis, vice president of marketing at the Palo Alto, Calif.-based change management specialist.

"It definitely plays into an area where we are very active. One of the obvious business drivers behind service management is compliance. We have a number of clients who are using us for compliance-related management," Vieraitis said.

"We want to go jointly to market with IBM in the compliance arena," he added.

Micro Strategies, a Danville, N.J.-based IBM Tier 1 Business Partner, plans to take the new suite of compliance tools first to clients but won't push them at the expense of landing an account, said Dan Lucky, vice president of data management solutions. Micro Strategies manages 911 data centers across the Northeast and provides management, security and storage solutions for large enterprises.

"We primarily stay with the IBM suite of products. We've tried to focus on the IBM relationship exclusively because we live and die by our decisions with them," Lucky said. "But sometimes we recommend a competitive software solution to win an account. We create compliance solutions, and I bundle in the necessary Tivoli products to make the whole thing work."