IBM Delivers BigFix Security and Compliance Software

IBM has announced new software thanks to its recent BigFix acquisition, which is designed to deliver greater security and compliance to thousands of laptops, PCs and servers.

IBM closed its BigFix acquisition in July 2010. BigFix software has built-in intelligence that identifies which devices are not in compliance with policies and recommends security fixes and timely software updates to up to 500,000 machines in a matter of minutes.

IBM’s new offering provides built-in intelligence that identifies all of a company’s PCs, laptops, servers, point-of-sale and virtualised devices – wherever they are – then flags when devices are not in compliance with corporate IT standards.

Reduced Administration

Its single dashboard makes the proper fixes across 500,000 machines and enterprises can see, change, enforce and report on security policies and system configurations of all endpoint devices in real time – including those not continuously connected to the corporate network.

The general availability of new BigFix Unified Management Software Platform includes more than 200 customer- and partner-specific enhancements, most notably improved virtualisation management and a new role-based interface.

“As organisations become increasingly more complex, virtualised and distributed, it’s critical for them to take proactive steps to secure and manage their IT environment in a consolidated and automated way,” said Amrit Williams, chief technology officer for BigFix technology at IBM, in a statement. “With BigFix’s new virtualisation and interface breakthroughs, IT staff can better manage and secure their IT environments.”

Customer Upgrade

IBM officials said upgrading existing BigFix deployments to version 8.0 requires no reboots and customers can upgrade as fast as their change control allows, unlike other management infrastructures which require “forklift” or migration upgrades.

Moreover, the BigFix software can also help expedite clients’ migrations to Windows 7 operating system. To help utilise IBM’s global reach, BigFix software has general availability today in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and simplified Chinese. BigFix now supports more than 70 operating systems including SUSE, HP-UX, OEL and CentOS, adding to the 70 operating system variants already supported across Windows, Mac, Unix and Linux.

IBM announced the close of the BigFix acquisition on 20 July.

Portfolio Boost

BigFix adds a set of highly regarded management technologies to the IBM software portfolio. The BigFix platform is used by organisations in government, finance, retail, educational, industrial and public utility sectors, IBM said. BigFix software impacts IT infrastructure management by replacing fragmented collections of single-purpose tools with the industry’s only unified visibility and control architecture that consolidates up to 18 security, IT compliance, decision support, and green computing functions.

According to analysts, as companies increase the deployment of virtualised assets, having greater management of those assets is critical for security and compliance. A major competitive differentiator of the new BigFix platform is its display of all virtual and physical assets in a single view to help locate, manage and protect virtualised and physical systems, IBM said. And securing the enterprise continues to be a top priority to clients.

Worldwide security software revenue is forecast to surpass $16.5 billion (£10.7 billion) in 2010, an 11.3 percent increase from 2009 revenue of $14.8 billion (£9.6 billion), according to Gartner.