Encentuate blue rinsed

One of IBM's press releases today announces that IDC has named them as the "Overall Leader in Worldwide Identity and Access Management Software".

Frankly, I don't care. Each analyst has a favourite and if you make your purchasing decisions solely based on what your favourite analyst says, you need to have your head examined (yes I know software vendors care about this - remember that I used to have to stand up in front of people and point at slides showing how much selected analysts loved IBM Tivoli). IBM just happens to be IDC's favourite in the Identity and Access Management software market.

I bring this up because buried within the press release is a sub-announcement of sorts:

"IBM also today announced the availability of new IBM Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-On software, redesigned based on technology from IBM's March 2008 Encentuate, Inc. acquisition."

In other words, IBM have finished "blue rinsing" Encentuate's product which they acquired earlier this year (read what I had to say about the saga here, here, here, here and here).

Interestingly enough, I can't seem to find a separate press release announcing the new version of IBM Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-On so I'm wondering if they let the cat out of the bag a little early. That said, the product documentation is available so maybe not.

The press release also mentions that:

"Portland General Electric, Oregon's largest electric utility, uses IBM Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-On and plans to upgrade to the new version 8.0 as part of its security technology strategy to help the utility company drive productivity and save costs on IT and help desk support. The effort has simplified password management for employees, who otherwise could have more than a dozen passwords to access over 20 different enterprise applications."

Two things:

1. Version 8.0?! Did they skip a whole version number? The latest version (up until this point) was version 6.0. What happened to version 7.0? In fact, IBM were quoted as saying version 7.0 would be the first incarnation of the Encentuate product re-badged as IBM Tivoli. So I'm a little confused. It's not a misprint (the product documentation labels it as being version 8.0). So I guess it's just some weird numbering system?
   
2. More importantly, has anyone told Portland General Electric what they're actually in for (read my first post on the acquisition if you don't know what I'm talking about)? I can't seem to find any instructions in the product documentation regarding how to upgrade from version 6.0 to version 8.0 (disclaimer: I haven't read the documentation cover to cover, so maybe it's buried in there somewhere). Are IBM actually going to help people upgrade gracefully or were they just paying customers lip service when they were assuring us that they would make it easy to do so? Here's Nishant's opportunity to suggest Portland General Electric switch to Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-On :-)
   

Update - Phill left the following as a comment:

"IBM has created a dedicated team of project managers and technical consultants to help customers in their migration of Passlogix to Encentuate - free of charge! This team has actually been assembled for sometime and out in the market place transitioning our clients."

It looks like IBM are doing something about it.