NetIQ Identity Manager 4.6 is a comprehensive identity management suite. It allows organizations to manage the full user life cycle, from initial hire, through ongoing changes, to ultimate retirement of the user relationship, and it also provides the means to audit and generate reports of the user's life cycle for compliance. Identity Manager includes capabilities for automated provisioning and de-provisioning of user accounts, managing passwords, and managing user data across your organization's directories, applications, databases, and operating system platforms. Through streamlined user administration and processes, Identity Manager helps organizations reduce management costs, increase productivity and security, and comply with government regulations.
Identity Manager includes a broad spectrum of functionality. In order to meet different customer needs, Identity Manager functionality is provided in two product groups: Advanced Edition and Standard Edition. Identity Manager includes the complete set of functionality in Advanced Edition. Standard Edition includes a subset of the features provided in Advanced Edition. For a comparison of features available in Advanced and Standard Editions, see the feature comparison table in the Identity Manager 4.6 Release Notes.
Prior to Identity Manager 4.6, Identity Manager Advanced and Standard Editions were delivered in separate ISOs. With Identity Manager 4.6, NetIQ delivers both editions in a single ISO to improve its delivery of new features, patches, documentation, and support, while allowing customers to select the solution capabilities that best match their needs.
Identity Manager 4.6 includes several components and tools. Some of the main components are listed below.
- Identity Manager Engine and Remote Loader: These components synchronize, transform, and distribute information across a wide range of applications, databases, operating systems, and directories.
- Drivers: Enable the flow of information between Identity Manager and the connected systems. All drivers are included with the Identity Manager, but not all driver activations are included with the Identity Manager purchase. All other drivers activations require an additional purchase of the Integration Module. An Integration Module can contain one or more drivers. For more information about the other drivers that are available, see NetIQ Identity Manager Drivers Documentation Web site. For purchasing information about the additional integration modules, see How to Buy.
- Identity Applications: Identity Manager lets you provision users based on their roles in the organization. You define the
roles and make the assignments according to your organizational needs. When a user is assigned to
a role, Identity Manager provisions the user with access to the resources associated with the role.
Users that have multiple roles receive access to the resources associated with all of the roles. The Identity Manager solution provides the following components for provisioning users:
- Identity Manager Dashboard
- Catalog Administrator
- User Application
The Dashboard provides a single access point for all Identity Manager users and administrators. It allows access to all existing Catalog Administrator and User Application functionality. With Identity Manager 4.6, the Dashboard replaces Identity Manager Home and Provisioning Dashboard.
NOTE: The identity applications are not available with Identity Manager 4.6 Standard Edition.
- Identity Reporting: This component generates reports that show critical business information about various aspects of your Identity Manager configuration, including information collected from Identity Vaults and managed systems such as Active Directory or SAP. Identity Reporting provides a set of predefined report definitions you can use to generate reports. In addition, it gives you the option to import custom reports defined in a third-party tool. The Identity Reporting user interface makes it easy to schedule reports to run at off-peak times to optimize performance.
Additionally, Identity Manager 4.6 offers several other components that help you build a full-fledged identity management framework. For a complete list of components and their versions shipped with Identity Manager, see Identity Manager 4.6 Release Notes.
The following Identity Manager tools help you build and maintain your Identity Manager environment:
- Analyzer for Identity Manager: An Eclipse-based identity management toolset that helps you ensure that internal data quality policies are adhered to by providing data analysis, data cleansing, data reconciliation, and data monitoring and reporting. Analyzer lets you analyze, enhance, and control all data stores throughout the enterprise.
- Designer for Identity Manager: An Eclipse-based tool that helps you design, deploy, and document your Identity Manager system. Using Designer's graphical interface, you can design and test your system in an offline environment, deploy the system into your production environment, and document all details of your deployed system.
- Catalog Administrator: A Web-based tool that allows business and security analysts manage roles and resources in Identity Manager without needing to understand the overall IT infrastructure. Though catalog is not a unique database or a set of files, it encompasses all information about roles, resources, and relationship between them. Catalog Administrator allows you to view and manage permission assignments across various connected systems in organizations managed by Identity Manager. Catalog Administrator also allows you to design roles and map them with resources across connected systems. Catalog Administrator is not available with Identity Manager 4.6 Standard Edition.
- iManager: A Web-based administration tool that helps you configure your Identity Manager system. After you install the Identity Manager plug-ins for iManager, you can manage Identity Manager and receive real-time health and status information about your Identity Manager system. With iManager, you can perform similar tasks as performed with Designer and also monitor the health of your system. NetIQ recommends that you use iManager for administrative tasks. Use Designer for configuration tasks that require changes to packages, modeling, and testing prior to deployment.