FIM 2010 R2 Beta Feedback Requested

If you aren’t already working with the R2 Beta release of FIM 2010, please download and check it out and then provide feedback in the public forums as to what you like and what you don’t like. Given that this is still the beta release, there is time to get your feature requests heard!

To access the R2 Beta you will need to sign-in to Connect, Microsoft’s site for evaluating and providing feedback on early or pre-released software. You just need a Windows Live ID to sign-in and create your profile. Once you sign-in to the site you’ll be able to browse a list of products accepting feedback or bugs and add those products to your dashboard by clicking Join.

Step-by-Step

(Lifted from Peter Geelen’s post)

You can access the site one of two ways:

1. By following this link: https://connect.microsoft.com/site433/SelfNomination.aspx?ProgramID=6639&pageType=1, OR
2. Logging into Connect
   1. Browse the Directory for Forefront Identity Manager.
   2. Click on the Join link on the topics you wish to join
   3. Answer the survey questions and then click Submit; this auto-approves you for the Beta connection
   4. Click the Downloads link in the left column

At the download section, you’ll find the following items:

• the FIM 2010 R2 Beta
• the FIM2010 ECMA2 Beta
• Outlook file for FIM CEP Online Meeting Series

As you are evaluating the products, we encourage you to discuss feedback in the forum, but to take the time to open bugs in the Feedback Center of the FIM Connect site. These bugs are triaged directly by the FIM Product Group so it’s important to file them. Use the forum to ask clarifying questions around configuration and experience and please share your positive and negative feedback about your experiences with the betas there.

SaaS and Identity Silos–the new Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

To borrow another metaphor, the old phrase:

“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”

…is reborn now as:

“Beware of SasS vendors bearing identity”

In this age of pushing our solutions to the cloud we need to be careful in adopting solutions that involve standing up another identity silo. Having another username and password is a time honored solution to most new applications but in this day and age is no longer acceptable. Stress to your SasS vendors that you need flexibility to:

• Federate with an external Identity Provider (i.e. your enterprise identity)
• Federate with a consumer Identity Provider (i.e. your Facebook/Yahoo/Google/Live identity)

There are certainly cases where SaaS vendors will need to provide both a solution for local username and password (small businesses for example) yet need the forethought to support extended federation scenarios for larger customers.

Another item that SaaS vendors are not immune to is the challenge of profile synchronization. Whenever an application must maintain preference or demographic data (name, title, menu preferences, etc) about you it must either keep that in a local store or rely on all of that data to arrive each time as part of the incoming claim set. In some cases, it’s simply not practical to do everything in the claim as it’s not the Identity Provider’s job to remember preferences for individual applications. The thing to remember here is that the profile data in the cloud must be created and maintained through some process. Look for options other than the manual ones to automate this.