Novell is stepping into the log management market with the launch of new product aimed at tightening security and regulatory compliance.

The Novell Sentinel Log Manager is designed to simplify auditing and bolster security by streamlining the management of raw event data used for risk investigations and compliance reporting for regulations such as HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and PCI DSS.

Most enterprises routinely capture and store information regarding transactions across networks and applications, traditionally in application and database logs, identity and access management repositories and network devices.

However, the volume of information, and the fact that it tends to be stored and processed in silos, means that analysis is often extremely time consuming and trends between systems can be missed.

"Successful reaction to new compliance pressures reaches across the organisation, from network and security to data management and application delivery," said Chris Howard, vice president and director of the executive advisory programme at analyst firm Burton Group.

"This reaction requires IT architects to work closely with their business peers in order to ensure quality of information and appropriate insight. Failure to address the infrastructure and human dynamics of compliance processes puts the enterprise at significant risk."

Novell said that Sentinel Log Manager attempts to overcome these hurdles by intelligently storing, analysing and reporting on security event data.

The system incorporates advanced search and reporting features to help generate the required security and compliance audits, while introducing data compression to help keep storage size down.

Sentinel Log Manager has been built to integrate into Novell's existing portfolio of compliance management systems, and is initially available in two configurations.

The SLM-2500 runs on a single Intel Xeon E5450 quad-core 3GHz CPU or a pair of Xeon L5240 dual-core 3GHz processors, 4GB of memory and two 1TB hard drives in a Raid 1 configuration.

The SLM-7500, with roughly triple the capacity, runs on a pair of Intel Xeon X5470 quad-core 3.33GHz CPUs, 8GB of memory and six 450GB hard drives in a Raid 5 setup.