Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 Released to Web

The RTW Build of Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 went live on the Microsoft Download Center on May 5th, 2010, and is now up for grabs for customers that need to manage digital identities on top of Windows Server. AD FS 2.0 is designed to integrate seamlessly with both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The promise from Microsoft, as AD FS 2.0 was released to web, is that the latest version places access-control decisions firmly in the hands of IT. The software giant indicates that customers leveraging AD FS 2.0 RTW will be able to take advantage of industry standard interoperable protocols while allowing for the collaboration across companies, supporting new Cloud scenarios, and enabling secure applications.

“AD FS 2.0 is a role in Windows Server that simplifies access and single sign-on to both on-premises and cloud-based applications. Using ‘claims-based’ identity technology, it helps enable secure business collaboration and productivity within the enterprise, across organizations, and on the Web,” Microsoft Senior Product Manager Joel Sider revealed.

According to Microsoft, feedback from testers was taken into consideration when shaping the final product. Input from early adopters that tried out the Release Candidate of AD FS 2.0 made the Redmond company simplify the proxy management, for example. In addition, a member of the team behind the Geneva Federated Identity and the Identity Metasystem underlined that the release was hammered in order to squeeze every last drop of performance, but also to make it as reliable as possible.

“Some of the top scenarios AD FS 2.0 will support are: collaboration with Office documents and SharePoint across companies with single sign-on access. Single sign-on access to hosted/cloud services, extended from on-premises Active Directory to Microsoft (or other) cloud services. Implementation of access security and management policies to many different applications with varied security requirements. Overall, AD FS 2.0 will help you streamline user access management with a simpler, unified approach and native single sign-on. It builds on AD and interoperates with other directories via WS and SAML support, too,” Sider added.

Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 is available for download here.