Kent, Wash. –April 11th, 2007 – The PowerTech Group Inc. today announced general availability of an update to PowerTech Authority Broker, the unique tool that is used to enforce separation of duties on System i servers. Release 3.1 provides customization capabilities for companies that wish to extend the tool.

Users can now integrate their own custom programs when a profile swap or release occurs. Extensive sample code is provided to enable administrators to hit the ground running. Some examples of the possibilities:

• Change the library list or accounting code of a user profile once it swaps.
• Verify that a valid call ticket has been entered correctly.
• Require a manager approval before allowing the swap to continue.

Other major new enhancements in this release are.

• Enhanced tracking of call tickets that users enter when they initiate a profile swap.
• Administrators can interactively view the list of currently swapped users. 

“PowerTech’s recently released “State of System i” study showed that the average number of user profiles with *ALLOBJ authority on a system i server is 82. Companies can fix this exposure with Authority Broker.” Said John Earl, CTO and Vice President of PowerTech.  “Programmers and IT staff don’t need to carry special authorities like *ALLOBJ all the time, but rather can check out special authorities when they need them for emergency fixes.”

Using patent pending technology in Authority Broker, administrators or Help Desk staff can grant special authorities only “as-needed”. All actions are fully audited while users are swapped to the powerful profile. Since April 2005, IBM has been shipping a free 30 day trial of the product with all distributions of i5 servers and upgrades to i5/OS.