News & comment tagged ‘news’
● SSO Plugin, around the world
posted by Danny Kellett on 2nd January 2012
With 2011 at a close, SSO Plugin has once again grown in popularity within the BMC market.
Banks, retail, public service, educational, technology, pharmaceutical, US military and government: SSO Plugin has been deployed to organisations in all these sectors during 2011.
Customers have continued to provide great feedback in the quotes section of our website, such as Tony R from a large US medical organisation who wrote:
They stayed with me in support throughout the night of our install even though our maintenance window started at 3am London time!
This single statement underlines the offering from JSS: we don't simply provide a quality product driven by listening to customers and implementing feedback, we provide support that's rated above our competitors. And we continue to offer upfront inclusive professional services at no cost, to deploy SSO Plugin in your environment to ensure it meets your requirements without any cost or commitment.
This year also saw the release of exciting integrations to BMC Dashboards, Analytics and SAP Business Objects. It didn't take long for existing customers to deploy these integrations, including a US military customer who implemented the BMC integrations without a single remote support session from ourselves, by following our instructions and online videos. We've also gained custom in the HP market with the release of SSO Plugin for HP Service Manager and Service Request Catalog.
And during 2012, new integrations will be announced.
We wish everyone a happy and prosperous new year and we look forward to working with you in 2012.
● SSO Plugin 3.5
posted by John B on 20th November 2011
SSO Plugin version 3.5 has been released, with many new features and integrations. The highlights include:
SAML v2 support for integration to Identity Providers such as Microsoft ADFS 2.0
Support for HP Service Manager 7.1+ and Service Request Catalog 1.3p1+.
Improvements to the built-in Active Directory integration to improve Kerberos support and ease of deployment.
Replacement login page for the BMC Mid Tier, promoting SSO access to BMC applications.
Improved error reporting through the SSO Plugin status page, helping you more quickly troubleshoot common problems.
The length of a user's session is reported on BMC AR System to provide more accurate data for license usage reporting. This information is not provided through out of the box functionality.
Read the full release notes for more information on what's new in this release.
● SSO Plugin in the news
posted by Danny Kellett on 8th November 2011
One of BMC's most respected partners, Materna, have written an article about SSO Plugin. You can find it on page 32 in their industry magazine Materna Monitor.
● SSO Plugin for BMC Analytics
posted by John B on 20th September 2011
SSO Plugin 3.4.6 has been successfully integrated with SAP Business Objects (BMC Analytics). Watch the video and learn how you can synchronise the BMC Analytics user repository with BMC ITSM.
This functionality is unique to SSO Plugin: Accept no imitations, SSO Plugin is the only product bringing BMC products together.
Contact JSS or your local BMC representative for more details of this exciting addition to the BMC product set.
● BMC Dashboards: One user repository is better than two
posted by John B on 10th July 2011
BMC Dashboards is a product that allows users to provide a graphical representation of service management data. It runs standalone from BMC AR System and maintains its own user repository. To allow a user access to Dashboards, an administrator must set up an account in Dashboards and apply the permissions, duplicating the permissioning already available in BMC ITSM.
One of our clients told us that if a user is added to new ITSM group, the administrator must then update their Dashboards user record using a totally different user interface. If a user leaves, the administrator must delete the record in both ITSM and Dashboards. The client concluded that this is not a practical solution for BMC clients, often large enterprises with tens of thousands of users.
We agreed, and we present SSO Plugin for BMC Dashboards and ITSM, a product that brings user authentication and permissioning together between BMC products.
SSO Plugin delivers:
Management of the Dashboards permissioning driven from ITSM.
Reduced cost, because doing something once is less error prone than doing it multiple times.
Increased security of data, because mutliple user repositories inevitably lead to user permissioning inaccuracies.
A solution that meets the needs of BMC clients, because this is what they've asked us to deliver.
We present to you a video of this exciting new functionality:
http://www.javasystemsolutions.com/jss/video/vie w/SSOPlugin-Dashboards
No other product in the BMC market provides this functionality. SSO Plugin is the only product bringing BMC products together.
Compare this functionality to BMC's AtriumSSO, which has no single user repository and doesn't provide true SSO: that's why BMC's largest clients select SSO Plugin.
● SSO Plugin 3.4
posted by Danny Kellett on 5th July 2011
We are pleased to announce the next major release of SSO Plugin, the industry standard SSO implementation for BMC products.
BMC Dashboards
The product features an integration with BMC Dashboards to provide not only SSO access, but user and role synchronisation with BMC ITSM, allowing the ITSM to become the authority for Dashboards user provisioning.
This is very different to other solutions available on the market: With SSO Plugin, you maintain just one user repository, and with others, you maintain two.
Improvements to built-in Active Directory authentication
If Kerberos authentication fails and NTLM is configured, built-in authentication will automatically degrade to NTLMv2 and re-challenge the browser.
The built-in Active Directory support previously bound to just one Active Directory for NTLM authentication. A comma separated list of ADs can now be provided for failover support.
The Windows NetBIOS domain is available through user aliasing whether Kerberos or NTLM was used to authenticate, allowing a consistent variable to be used for aliasing.
Features to reduce support costs
User accounts are validated when a valid SSO request is received by the Midtier SSO Plugin. This includes ensuring a blank password (the BMC design for SSO enabling an account), force password change set to false, and disable password management set to true.
User interface improvements
When accessing the Midtier SSO Plugin status page:
All AR System servers are checked to ensure they are SSO enabled.
The configuration of the authentication server is validated, ie to ensure the JSS AREA plugin is loading and first on the AREA hub (if used).
The ssoadmin password is checked and reset when submitting the Midtier SSO setup.
Left navigation bar removed from Midtier Kerberos and NTLM error pages.
Greater use of traffic light colouring throughout Midtier interface to highlight information and error statements.
Extending SSO Plugin to other non-BMC applications
The Identity Federation Service can be used to propagate AR System login name and groups to third party applications, allowing AR System to become an authentication hub.
Logging and auditing
Built-in NTLMv2 failures are written to JSS authentication log, to help administrators more speedily resolve problems.
Upgrades for existing customers
The release is available at no cost to customers that are enjoying our support service. Simply download the product and consult the installation manual for upgrade steps, or contact JSS support for assistance.
● SSO Plugin 3.3.6: Now with SSO for-BSM Dashboards
posted by John B on 1st May 2011
SSO Plugin 3.3.6 is a maintenance release containing a number of bug fixes and usability improvements, including initial SSO support for BSM Dashboards.
● SSO Plugin 3.3
posted by John B on 16th March 2011
SSO Plugin 3.3 has been released. This release includes many new features for easing installation and onboarding of new clients, including:
Easier deployment across multiple AR System servers in a server group.
Recognition of the "User disabled" UI control in the AR System User form. BMC state this is for "indicative purposes", yet our (and their) users asked us to "make it work", so we did.
X509 / CAC / DoD support with step by step configuration guide for new users.
Localised Midtier configuration, allowing larger organisations to deploy Midtiers into multiple (non-trusted) domains, each with a different SSO configuration.
Midtier and AR System "quick disable" feature.
Identity Federation Service, allowing you to enable any Java based non-BMC product using Midtier as a source of authority.
The release notes provide a more complete overview of the changes.