Another completely Web-based solution, Access360's enRole 4.2 has excellent integrated workflow tools. The drag-and-drop interface is easy to understand and manipulate, making the creation of an approval process a breeze. But at $600,000, this product was too rich for our blood.
All four vendors indicated that their products could interface with existing workflow products; Waveset adheres to the workflow interoperability standards established by the Workflow Management Consortium.
EnRole lets you configure teams and groups for integration into the approval process, as does Business Layers' eProvision. EnRole requires an agent to communicate with every system, but like Novell's and Business Layers' products, does not require that the agent reside on the managed system. This is important because it is often neither desirable nor feasible to install an agent on the managed system.
The downside to employing an agent that resides on the provisioning server to manage a remote host is that security is often compromised. Access360 uses PKI x.509 certificates between server and remote agents, but this security measure is lost when deploying server-side agents as opposed to remote agents. Waveset uses PKCS5 cell padding, 168-bit 3DES encryption and full CHAP-like bidirectional authentication. Novell says it does encrypt data but did not describe its methods, and Business Layers uses either SSL or SSH.
enRole 4.2, Access360, (949) 255-3100, (877) 742-6400. www.access360.com
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