What should IT pros know about Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services capabilities?
The technology just became available with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Release 2. ADFS, as it’s known, supports federation. It’s tightly integrated with Active Directory, which means there’s no need to make big changes to applications to support different types of security. And since ADFS is free with Windows Server 2003 R2, customers can save the time and money they might have spent on evaluating products – and get started on pilot projects now. ADFS also provides single sign-on capabilities for Web-based access and centralized administration of extranet accounts, and support for secure transit of digital identification. As a first release, ADFS only supports Web applications that incorporate the WS-Federation specification. That means the technology only works for “passive-mode” federation of applications that are accessed through browser client software. For now, ADFS doesn’t handle “active-mode” federation between applications with fat client interfaces, such as ERP or CRM applica
