Ramesys Highly Commended- National Business Awards National Programme, IMechE Business Innovation of the Year Award 2008

In The National Business Awards National Programme 2008, Ramesys has been Highly Commended in The IMechE Business Innovation of the Year category for its new identity management system, Unity.

'The standard and number of entries received was, as expected, incredibly high. However, the judges singled out the Ramesys entry for special praise and have awarded Ramesys Highly Commended status,' said the organisers.

As schools acquire more ICT systems, the challenge of creating and maintaining the necessary user accounts increases. Unity addresses the following;

* User account creation and maintenance

* Password management

* Class information and end of year rollout

* The 14 -19 agenda and pupil mobility

Unity is special because of the way Ramesys has brought together password policies, group management and user population with MIS integration. Unity provides a unified interface, simplifies administration, and is a standards based approach to integration.

The Schools Interoperability Framework standard provides a mature and robust framework for transferring standardised data between the systems found within educational establishments. It can be used to transfer data between the systems within a school, between the school and the local authority or between schools. As SIFA UK becomes the accepted standard, Unity will support the standard and deliver SIFA-certified connectors.

Merely synchronising passwords is not a sustainable way forward for systems that are not integrated with identity management systems. Unity creates a single repository of all user information which is used to populate the integrated systems. This single repository, where each user only occurs once, is the natural source of data to power a Shibboleth Identity Provider service.

As a member of the UK Access Management Federation, Ramesys is committed to delivering its systems to function as an UK AMF identity provider service.

The IMechE Business Innovation of the Year award will ultimately go to the organisation that can best demonstrate a proven ability to create, nurture, and develop innovations or processes that substantially improve the commercial performance or prospects of the company. The announcement will be in November at the annual awards dinner, when Ramesys will also collect the Highly Commended Certificate.

http://www.nationalbusinessawards.com/nbafinalists2008/index.cfm?ccs=678&cs=3818