Identity Managed by Windows Live
'Identity' is a term that revolves around everything where an interaction or a communication exist.The interaction can be human-human or human-system or system-system. In reality when we build systems, managing end user identity is one of the major agenda on the cards. But again, managing multiple identity stores for various systems does not make sense. The need of the hour is to provide single sign-on capability to the end user. For an Intranet application, Active Directory based authentication followed by authorization is the rule of thumb. While exposing the application to the outside world (Internet) and with the user base expected to grow signiicantly, it does not make sense for Enterprises to manage user identities. The disired route is to outsource the entire management of users to an external entity who is trusted and reliable. Here is where Windows Live ID comes into play (formerly known as Microsoft Passport),
Windows Live ID provides a platform that facilitates managment of user identity & enables authentication of a user from the an application. The advantage of this platform is the entire task of managing user identities is taken out of the application space. Enterprises/Customers can rely on the Windows Live ID SDK to integrate Live ID authentication into their applicatin space. Check out the below URL for more details on What & Hows of leveraging Windows Live ID