* Centrify, Vintella work with Microsoft to promote federation
One of the new technologies to be coming with Windows Server 2003 R2, due later this year, is Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). This uses the services of the Microsoft/IBM-created Web Services Initiative (WSI, also known as WS-*) to provide an open model for single sign-on to Web applications.
At the recent Microsoft TechEd Europe conference, Centrify and Vintela joined Microsoft to announce their support for extending the new capabilities provided by ADFS to non-Windows environments.
Centrify and Vintela already provided authentication services via Active Directory to non-Windows platforms. I caught up with Centify CEO Tom Kemp and Vintela Vice President Jackson Shaw at the Burton Group’s Catalyst conference last week, and both were enthusiastic about the possibilities opened up with ADFS being a part of the server fabric.
According to Kemp, “ADFS now vastly simplifies users’ ability to set up secure, federated relationships for their Windows environments. Centrify complements Microsoft’s solution by extending this secure, trusted relationship to non-Microsoft Web servers.”
Shaw, formerly in charge of Microsoft’s Identity Integration Server (MIIS) program, was both partly responsible for the ADFS implementation and is now in a position to benefit from it. “Support for ADFS allows our customers to quickly take advantage of Active Directory interoperability in a federated Web environment,” Shaw told me.
The Burton Group is very enthusiastic about what it sees as the coming explosion of federation services. CEO Jamie Lewis believes that federation will reduce costs of, and increase the scale of interaction between and among enterprises as well as between the enterprises’ vendors, clients and customers. As ADFS becomes part of the server operating system, it will be an important piece in many organizations’ architecture.
The support of Vintella and Centrify will ensure that all platforms in your organization can easily federate with all the platforms your partners might use. If you aren’t planning on getting the R2 release of Windows Server 2003, you should probably re-think. Federation is most likely in your future and R2, with ADFS, will make federation a lot easier.
