Netegrity Sets Industry Performance Record for Managing Secure E-Commerce Applications
Independently Certified Test Results Demonstrate Over 21,000 Log-ins Per Minute
May 11, 1999 08:27 AM
WALTHAM, Mass., May 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Netegrity(R), Inc., NETE , a leading provider of software and services for controlling user access to electronic commerce applications, today announced independent, third-party test results confirming breakthrough product performance and scalability for its secure user management software, SiteMinder(R). The performance and scalability tests demonstrate that SiteMinder is the first and only product of its kind to handle the needs of large Web sites, extranets, ISPs, and Portals.
The performance and scalability tests were developed and implemented by Mindcraft, Inc., a well known, independent performance testing and analysis firm in Los Gatos, California. These test results establish conclusively that Netegrity's award-winning SiteMinder has achieved breakthrough performance and scalability for Web-based security transactions, setting new standards that far surpass the performance of any other competing product in the industry.
With two dual-processor Sun(TM) Enterprise(TM) 450 servers, SiteMinder was able to handle 21,680 log-in transactions per minute, making it ideally suited for management of user access for large, complex e-commerce sites. Compared to some competing products, Netegrity's SiteMinder offers more than two orders of magnitude better performance for authentication and authorization transactions.
"Our tests demonstrate that SiteMinder is a high-performance, scalable user management system capable of satisfying the performance needs of the most demanding Web sites," said Bruce Weiner, president, Mindcraft.
"Customers are increasingly demanding highly robust and scalable e- commerce management solutions," said Stuart Wells, senior vice president of Infrastructure Products within the Sun-Netscape Alliance. "SiteMinder's impressive scalability on the Sun platform, combined with the Netscape Directory Server for high-speed directory services, will enable us to provide better integrated solutions for customers with large e-commerce applications."
Netegrity recently partnered with Mindcraft to develop the industry's first and only "Benchmark Performance" initiative for products like SiteMinder. As part of this initiative, Mindcraft developed performance and scalability tests that assist companies in identifying their e-commerce scalability requirements. Netegrity and Mindcraft have established a benchmarking standard against which all other secure user management products can be compared. In addition, Mindcraft has developed the industry's first and only set of testing tools specifically designed to evaluate product performance and scalability for products like SiteMinder. These independently developed third-party testing tools are available from both Netegrity and Mindcraft, enabling customers to independently test their unique SiteMinder configurations and conduct comparative tests with other vendor's products. Netegrity invites its competitors to run these tests on their products, and make public the results.
"Netegrity has reached a significant milestone today by delivering the industry's most scalable solution for processing Web security transactions, giving customers with large e-commerce sites and portals the critical infrastructure they need to successfully build secure, fast access to personalized applications," said Barry N. Bycoff, CEO and president, Netegrity, Inc. "In addition, by providing a standard industry benchmark and offering standalone testing tools, Netegrity and Mindcraft are providing customers with the tools and information they need to plan their business critical e-commerce sites. As part of the ongoing initiative, Netegrity intends to continue to raise the performance bar even further in the coming months."
The Test Methodology
A number of comprehensive tests were done to confirm the scalability of SiteMinder. All tests were run against a Netscape Directory Server populated with one million user names, in order to simulate a large-scale deployment environment.
The first tests were conducted to measure the effect of adding an additional CPU to a SiteMinder Policy Server machine. The results indicate that the authentication and authorization transaction throughput of a Policy Server as measured by the number of log-ins per minute virtually doubled on a two-processor machine, when compared to the results achieved on a single processor machine.
The second set of tests was developed to test the effect of load balancing on overall SiteMinder performance. These tests were conducted using two Sun Enterprise 450 servers as replicated SiteMinder Policy Servers. The results demonstrated that the load balancing capabilities of SiteMinder provided exactly double the performance of a single-server configuration. The load- balanced SiteMinder configuration processed 21,680 log-ins per minute, clearly establishing an entirely new standard for Web-based access control performance. These results confirm that SiteMinder can scale up to meet the needs of even the largest intranet or extranet environments, since performance rises linearly as additional servers are added.
The SiteMinder Architecture
The SiteMinder architecture was specifically designed with high performance and scalability in mind. SiteMinder achieves the industry's best performance using the following capabilities:
-- Load Balancing
The SiteMinder Web Agent can distribute user authentication and authorization requests across a set of Policy Servers, so that very high performance and scalability can be achieved. In addition, the Policy Server can distribute directory requests across a set of directory servers, a capability supported by no other product of this kind today.
-- Two-level caching
SiteMinder caches all relevant information at both the Policy Server and Web Agent. This allows very high transaction rates to be achieved for both authentication and authorization requests.
-- Native Directory-Enabled Architecture
SiteMinder can store all user and privilege information in a high performance LDAP directory such as Netscape Directory Server. As a result, all authentication and authorization requests can be resolved against a single data store. Competing products store privilege information in SQL databases and proxy to LDAP and must, therefore, call both systems in order to authenticate a user -- effectively doubling system overhead.
-- Component replication and automatic failover
All SiteMinder components can be replicated for high reliability. Also, if a component (e.g., the Policy Server) is unavailable, the Web Agent will automatically and transparently failover to another Policy Server so that processing can continue uninterrupted.
About Netegrity
Netegrity, Inc. NETE is a leading provider of software and services for controlling user access to electronic commerce applications. Headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, the company's flagship product, SiteMinder, is the industry's first secure user management system and provides access control, single sign-on, and distributed user management for Intranet and Extranet applications. SiteMinder was a winner of the 1999 A-list Award, sponsored by the Open Software Associates. Netegrity can be reached at 781-890-1700 or netegrity.com
About Mindcraft
Mindcraft is a highly respected independent testing lab based in Los Gatos, California. The company was founded in 1985 to provide high quality services and products to vendors and end users who want to test software, system, and network products.
Bruce Weiner, Mindcraft's president, is a member of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) Board of Directors. Mindcraft is the largest Accredited POSIX Testing Laboratory in the world.
Mindcraft develops state-of-the-art testing tools and uses them to help its clients in capacity planning, benchmarking, product evaluations, product acquisitions, and application performance and quality testing.
1999 Netegrity, Inc. Netegrity, the Netegrity logo, and SiteMinder are trademarks of Netegrity, Inc. All other product names, service marks and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners. Sun, Sun Microsystems, and Sun Enterprise are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
SOURCE Netegrity, Inc.
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