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One of the best features of eTrust was the fact that it supports load balancing to help achieve scalability and high availability. Except Evidian, none of the other products that I reviewed in this paper offer load balancing. Unfortunately, no data was available on eTrust's largest real world deployment.
Another thing that Computer Associates had going for it was one of the lowest price tags. eTrust Single Sign-on costs $50 per user for blocks of 1000 user licenses. Computer Associates drops the price to a mere $35 per user if the licenses are purchased in blocks of 10,000.
eTrust Single Sign-on's biggest downfall was its lack of support for UNIX applications. The product only supports single sign-on for text based UNIX. These applications must not be running in X-Windows mode.
I was somewhat disappointed in Computer Associates' customer service department. Computer Associates refused to answer any of my questions about eTrust Single Sign-on. They told me that I would only be able to get my questions answered by going through an independent sales representative. Once I explained that I was simply doing a product review rather than attempting to purchase the product, the representative from Computer Associates refused to give me the name or number of a sales person. Fortunately, I was able to locate a dealer through the Internet who was very helpful in supplying me with the information for this paper.
Still another problem with he Computer Associates product is that it's difficult to deploy and requires lots of complex scripting. The Computer Associates Web site recommends hiring an entire team of developers to assist with product deployment.
The biggest problem with PassGo is that it doesn't do true single sign-on, but rather relies on password synchronization. Additionally, the product lacks any personalization features and doesn't have any support for UNIX clients. My personal feeling is that in a couple of years, PassGo might evolve into a more competitive security application, but presently lacks the maturity of some of the other existing products.
|
Weight |
Feature
Value |
Novell |
Evidian |
IBM |
CA |
PassGo |
|
(Default) |
Points |
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Weight
x Score = Value |
1 to 5 5 is Best |
1 to 5 5 is Best |
1 to 5 5 is Best |
1 to 5 5 is Best |
1 to 5 5 is Best |
|
|
Value |
|||||
|
50 |
Security |
4 (200
Points) |
5 (250
Points) |
3 (150
Points) |
4 (200
Points) |
1 (50
Points) |
|
|
(50x5=250 possible points) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
20 |
Ease of Deployment |
5 (100
Points) |
5 (100
Points) |
1 (20
Points) |
2 (40
Points) |
4 (80
Points) |
|
|
(20x5=100 possible points) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
20 |
Scalability |
5 (100
Points) |
5 (100
Points) |
3 (60
Points) |
5 (100
Points) |
3 (60
Points) |
|
|
(20x5=100 possible points) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
10 |
Cost for a 5,000 User Organization |
$395,000 |
$300,000 |
377,000 |
$250,000 |
$180,000 |
|
|
|
|
|
(single
Server) |
|
(single
server) |
|
|
(10x5=50 possible points) |
3 (30
Points) |
4 (40
Points) |
3 (30
Points) |
5 (50
Points) |
5 (50
Points) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
100% |
Total
Value of Possible Points=500 |
430 Points |
490 Points |
260 Points |
390 Points |
240 Points |
As you can see from the weighted comparison, Evidian has come out on top, with Novell in a strong second place. IBM and PassGo were at the bottom of the list.
In summary, the final scoring indicated the below results:
|
Vendor and Product Name |
Summary Scoring |
|
Novell |
420 |
|
Evidian Access Master |
490 |
|
IBM |
260 |
|
Computer Associates |
390 |
|
PassGo |
240 |
The graph below helps to illustrate how much higher Evidian scored than its competitors.
![[]](fig4.jpg)
Figure 4: Bar Chart of Legacy Single Sign-On Product Capabilities
Whichever legacy single sign-on product you end up selecting for your organization, don't forget to tally in the cost of implementation and support, which together reflect the total cost of ownership.