Technology briefs: RSA to release updated ID app

20.03.2006
Microsoft, Radvison Allow SIP Integration

Microsoft Corp. and Fairlawn, N.J.-based Radvision Inc. announced a licensing agreement to give third-party developers the ability to write software that allows integration of Microsoft Office Live Communications Server (LCS) with non-Windows communications systems that comply with the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Phones and other applications such as instant messaging services could be connected to LCS under this scenario. General availability of the SIP extensions to LCS will be in the second half of the year.

RSA to release updated ID app

RSA Security Inc. in Bedford, Mass., has announced that RSA Federated Identity Manager 3.0, which allows the use of secure, trusted identities for communications, will be available in the second quarter. The new version includes support for the Security Assertion Markup Language 2.0 protocol as well as improved manageability and scalability, a redesigned Web browser-based graphical user interface and new tools for testing federated connections, according to the company. The software can be integrated with a wider range of Web application servers than previous versions. It's priced on a per-federated-connection basis at about US$50,000 for three connections or $100,000 for 10 connections.

New SGI blades use FPGA technology

Silicon Graphics Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., has started producing blades that use Xilinx Inc.'s Virtex field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology. FPGA increases performance by extracting some application algorithms and processing them separately. The SGI RASC RC100 computation blade is also designed to work with SGI's existing Altix servers. Pricing starts at $22,750.