CA’s SiteMinder product, which came through the Netegrity acquisition, is no stranger to WebLogic customers. CA has long certified integration with WebLogic. And it has done the same with other Java platforms such as IBM WebSphere, which surprisingly also comprises a decent chunk of the SiteMinder installed base (IBM of course, has its own Tivoli Access Manager). These relationships date back to the Netegrity days.
While you could get CA to certify the integration, if you were a WebLogic customer, you either had to do it yourself or rely on consultants. And, of course, BEA and CA went to market separately with WebLogic and SiteMinder, respectively.
With the new alliance, CA will distributed a pre-integrated bundling of SiteMinder on WebLogic, and has chosen WebLogic as the preferred Java platform for the rest of its identity and access management suite. Additionally, both sales forces will identify opportunities for the other, although of course, each still sells to different stakeholders in the organization (BEA to software development, and CA to security and infrastructure admins).
More importantly, in the long run, both will look for further opportunities to integrate their product lines. For instance, CA will look for ways to make access authorizations more granular so as to make single sign on more feasible for customers. And CA will also look to extending SiteMinder integration with BEA’s AquaLogic SOA products.
But that’s all for the future. CA said it would have the pre-integrated SiteMinder on WebLogic bundle ready by sometime in the second half of the year.
