I saw an announcement today by Symark that they are now entering the AD/Unix/Linux authentication space already populated by folks like Vintela, Centrify and Likewise. Symark has been around for a while but were focused more on policy-based management of Unix/Linux system security rather than Windows integration. But that changes with their new ADVantage solution, which puts them squarely into this crowded market. Most interestingly for me, they are yet another vendor offering Group Policy management of Unix/Linux systems. From screenshots on their site, it appears that they’ve taken the same approach as some of the other vendors of extending Group Policy using custom ADM templates that get read and translated by non-Windows systems into meaningful configuration commands for those platforms.
It will be interesting to see where this goes. That now makes 4 vendors that I know of who are doing heteregeneous Group Policy management, so it will be interesting to see if this market moves forward from managing basic configuration options on non-Windows platforms to doing the real interesting systems and application configuration tasks that could be done using this technology. So far, from what I’ve seen, most of these folks have taken baby steps in terms of what is possible. Maybe a new player in the space will urge all of them forwards!
Tags
Darren, Re:”That now makes 4 vendors that I know of who are doing heteregeneous Group Policy management, so it will be interesting to see if this market moves forward from managing basic configuration options on non-Windows platforms to doing the real interesting systems and application configuration tasks that could be done using this technology.”
Both Centrify and Likewise software in their current 4.0 products allow quite deep configuration of systems/application management. Admitiedly, they’re not as far along as the new GP-Preferences, but they’re both quite far along on the OS management side.
Also, in my tests of Centrify and Likewise, they’re not using custom ADM templates any more, since those have limited feature-sets. They’re now adding extensions to the policy engine in some fashion.
Rob-
Thanks for the update about the ADMs. Good to know that these folks are moving away from that towards “CSE-like” behavior.
In terms of the more advanced stuff I was referring, no doubt that these guys are getting more sophisticated on OS configuration. The Mac stuff Centrify is doing is very thorough. I think, however, that there is plenty of additional opportunity to move beyond just OS config and into server app. configuration (e.g. app servers, web servers, etc.) and that is what I haven’t seen yet. But then again, it doesn’t really exist that much on Windows so I suppose I’m not surprised. I just think the opportunity to use GP in more interesting ways is there!