The Clear Market Leader

Vintela Authentication Services

At its core Vintela Authentication Services provides centralized authentication for Unix, Linux, and Mac systems to Active Directory (AD).  With more than 500 current customers and 3 million ‘seats’, Vintela Authentication Services is the clear market leader in Active Directory integration.  

Benefits of Vintela Authentication Services

Vintela Authentication Services provides many significant benefits to companies seeking to simplify identity and access management by leveraging Active Directory for non-Windows system and application authentication and authorization. Among the benefits this approach offers to Unix, Linux, and Mac systems and a number of applications, some of the most popular include:

• Consolidate Unix, Linux, and Mac identities in Active Directory to simplify your identity management challenges for authentication and access control
• Extending the benefits of Windows Group Policy to Unix, Linux, and Mac systems
• Easily migrate from NIS (Network Information Service) to Active Directory
• The flexibility to deploy the solution specific to the unique requirements of your Unix environment, according to your timeline and priorities, and with a simple path to identity best practices
• Increased efficiency, security, and compliance through AD-based single sign-on, reduced sign-on, and centralized authentication
• Reduced complexity and faster deployment for existing or planned identity framework implementations

Vintela Authentication Services Named
2005 Category-Breaker by NetworkWorld

Extend Active Directory to Unix, Linux, and Mac Systems and Applications

Vintela Authentication Services functionally extends AD's security, compliance, and authentication capabilities to Unix, Linux, and Mac. It provides a cost-effective, enterprise-proven, and standards-based solution for some of the most difficult identity and access management challenges. With Vintela Authentication Services, the same infrastructure, processes, and personnel that are already in place to manage Windows resources can now be extended to support and manage AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris Unix; RedHat, SuSE, Fedora, and Debian Linux; as well as VMware ESX Server, Mac OS X and a wide range of Unix-based applications including SAP, DB2, and Java. The result is enhanced security and a clear path to enterprise-wide regulatory compliance. 

With Vintela Authentication Services, Unix, Linux, and Mac systems natively and seamlessly become full members of AD - joined to the AD domain. That means that many of the advanced capabilities AD offers in Windows environments can be extended to those systems which previously couldn't take advantage of these features. Thus, in addition to integrating Unix and Windows identities, Vintela Authentication Services enables Group Policy for Unix configuration management and Macintosh desktop policy management. 

Since Vintela Authentication Services is entirely standards-based, tools that expand the management, provisioning, and reporting capabilities of AD can provide the same benefits for Unix, Linux, and Mac accounts. It's easy to deploy and requires no additions to your existing AD infrastructure. The end result is the elimination of expensive and redundant, platform-specific identity management tasks and technologies, and the unification of Windows and non-Windows identities for consolidated usernames, passwords and password policy enforcement. With this product, organizations experience increased operational efficiency, reduced operational costs, the elimination of unnecessary complexity, and an enhanced level of security and compliance. The result is identity integration between Unix, Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Quest is the Clear Market Leader in AD Integration and Identity and Directory Consolidation

With an unparalleled relationship with Microsoft and recognized by Microsoft, Vintela Authentication Services is able to offer the most robust support of Active Directory integration on the market. Out of the thousands of companies that partner with Microsoft, only Quest was named the 2007 ISV of the Year by Microsoft.  Quest also won the same award in 2004 and has either won or been a finalist in each of the last four years. This means that no matter what your Active Directory environment looks like, Vintela Authentication Services can extend it to your Unix, Linux, and Mac systems. This includes support for multiple forests and domains, Windows 2000 and 2003 at any Forest functional level, and even two-way, one-way, and no-way trusts. In addition, Vintela Authentication Services provides the flexibility to offer rich, benefit laden deployment in both schema-based and schema-less options.

A Standards-based Approach

Microsoft Active Directory is an ideal access, authentication and authorization solution due to its effective implementation of standards. In Windows, industry standards (Kerberos, LDAP, and the LDAP as network information service, RFC 2307) are used to create a secure, scalable and centrally manageable single sign-on for Windows-based systems. All Windows hardware and software use the same standards to participate in the AD domain. The result is a seamlessly integrated user experience with a high level of security and compliance. 

Vintela Authentication Services implements those same standards, integrated with native Unix standards including Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL), Generic Security Services API (GSS-API), Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) and Name Service Switch (NSS). Combined, these standards provide the 'glue' that allows AD to serve authentication information to Unix, Linux, and Mac systems.

*This product includes software developed by SAP AG