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Microsoft’s Identity and Access Management solution provides enterprises with simplified identity management and federation for secure, compliant access to resources both on-premises and in-the-cloud from virtually any location or device. More information.
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Forefront Identity Manager provides organizations with solutions to manage user accounts and access, password and certificate-based credentials, and identity-based policies across Windows and heterogeneous environments. Forefront Identity Manager includes the following major features within the four categories below:
User Management: automated provisioning and deprovisioning, manual provisioning and deprovisioning, white pages, and user profile management.
Credential Management: self-service password reset through Windows logon and SharePoint-based portal, extensible password reset gates, certificate lifecycle management, support for managing Windows Server 2008 certificates.
Group Management: self-service and admin based security group and distribution list management, attribute-driven dynamic groups, group expiration and renewals, management of distribution lists from Outlook.
Policy Management: policy authoring, editing, and enforcement, integrated Workflow Foundation-based workflow, logging, delegation, identity synchronization and consistency, heterogeneous system connectivity.
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The RC1 release of Forefront Identity Manager 2010 will be available for public download on September 30, 2009. FIM 2010 will dramatically change the identity management landscape by delivering powerful self-service capabilities for Office end-users, rich administrative tools and enhanced automation for IT professionals and .NET and WS-* based extensibility for developers.
There are 4 areas of improvement in RC1:
Rebranding: The product is now rebranded as Forefront Identity Manager 2010. This name change goes across all of the components, but for IT Pros and Developers there will still be a few places outside of the normal tools and UIs where the older ILM and MIIS branding might show up. This rebranding is also happening online with www.microsoft.com/fim being the core site and in the documentation updates coming with RC1 and RTM.
Performance: There are significant performance and scalability improvements across the product.
Features: There are key feature enhancements, such as the ability to show invalid security group members and to disable batch approve/reject of membership requests if needed. A System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) management pack and configuration migration tools are also new for RC1.
UI refresh: The FIM 2010 user interface has enhanced usability and layout in many areas, resulting directly from RC0 customer feedback.
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Forefront Identity Manager is on target for release in the first quarter of 2010 with a new Release Candidate (RC1) on September 30, 2009. Our current Release Candidate program has been successful with thousands of customer downloads. A variety of customers have told us that innovative features like desktop based self-service capabilities and centralized IT tools will allow them to increase the reach of identity and access management across their enterprises. They plan to use Forefront Identity Manager in a wide variety of situations and scenarios.
We have been working closely with a number of early adopter customers, in both public and private sectors, as well as our own internal Microsoft IT (MSIT). As we are getting closer to completing the development of Forefront Identity Manager we want to ensure a positive migration, deployment and management experience for all customers.
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Forefront Identity Manager is intended to enhance your MIIS and ILM 2007 investments. Forefront Identity Manager is intended to further enhance your MIIS and ILM investments by providing a set of solutions for user, access, credential, and policy management with a framework that empowers end users and gives IT the tools they need to effectively manage identities. A goal for Forefront Identity Manager is to enable your organization to build on MIIS and ILM 2007 solutions to enjoy the benefit of codeless provisioning, group management, password and strong credential management, Windows Workflow Foundation workflow, WS-* APIs, and other Forefront Identity Manager investments.
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Forefront Identity Manager provides organizations with solutions to manage user accounts and access, password and certificate-based credentials, and identity-based policies across Windows and heterogeneous environments. Forefront Identity Manager extends the functionality of ILM 2007 with new capabilities focused on:
Providing IT with the management capabilities to perform common identity management tasks without writing code, and securely delegate tasks to end users.
Empowering end users to manage aspects of their digital identities through tools they are comfortable with, such as Office, SharePoint, and Windows.
Enabling developers and ISVs to easily extend and customize the solution.
Microsoft is also implementing Forefront Identity Manager on a common set of services - including workflow, delegation, web services APIs, and audit logs - that customers and ISVs can use to extend the core product functionality.
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The Certificate management service component has been updated to support new platforms.
FIM CM Server support for Windows Server 2008 64-bit The FIM CM server now only supports installation on 64-bit Windows Server 2008.
FIM CM CA module support for Windows Server 2008 64-bit and 32-bit The FIM CM modules now support installation on 64-bit and 32-bit Windows Server 2008 in addition to 32-bit Windows Server 2003.
Client support for Windows Vista 64-bit The FIM CM client now supports installation on 64-bit Windows Vista Enterprise and 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate in addition to 32-bit Windows XP, 32-bit Windows Vista Enterprise, and 32-bit Windows Vista Ultimate. Note: The FIM CM Bulk client is only supported in 32-bit Windows XP.
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Yes, with the updates made to support Windows Server 2008 and 64 bit platforms the supported smart card platform was also updated with additional new versions. The list of supported platforms is available on our system requirements page.
