IBM acquires Encentuate

Frequently Asked Questions

What are you announcing today?
Today, IBM announced that it has acquired Encentuate, Inc., a privately held company based in Redwood City, CA with a development lab in Singapore. Encentuate's operations will be integrated into IBM's Tivoli Software business unit.

What is Encentuate? Encentuate is a private software company with more than 80 customers worldwide that offers an enterprise single sign-on product set.

What technology does Encentuate provide?
Encentuate provides an enterprise single sign-on product set that helps enterprises simplify access to corporate assets, strengthen security, track compliance at the user desktop and reduce operating expenses.

What is driving the need for Encentuate's technology?
Enterprises increasingly wish to safeguard access to key applications in accordance with regulatory compliance requirements. Enterprise single sign-on enables enterprises to securely streamline the sign-on process and provide an audit/tracking mechanism to monitor and document access. Enterprise single sign-on further helps improve end-user productivity and lower support expenses by, in effect, reducing the number of passwords required in the desktop environment. This enables end users to more quickly access the important information they need.

Do Encentuate products overlap with what IBM Tivoli provides today?
IBM's solution for enterprise single sign-on is IBM Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-On. With Encentuate we are enhancing our single sign-on technology and addressing customers' needs for application integration, strong authentication integration, and flexible deployment of their identity and access management infrastructure. Encentuate technology is IBM's strategic enterprise single sign-on platform going forward, and we intend upcoming releases of IBM Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-On to be based on Encentuate technology. We believe that this technology can provide differentiated value to our customers in terms of new capabilities and relational value when deployed in concert with IBM Tivoli Identity Manager, IBM Tivoli Access Manager for e-business, and IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager. We are working closely with our IBM Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-On customers to understand their evolving needs for single sign-on and to help develop plans for them to take advantage of this new technology.

How does Encentuate support IBM's broader security strategy?
The IBM Security Framework helps our clients improve security governance, risk management and compliance efforts across five categories: people and identity; data and information; application and process; network, server and endpoint; and physical infrastructure. We expect Encentuate technology to play a pivotal role in the IBM Security Framework by helping our clients protect users (people and identity) and secure applications (application and process).