Simplify User Access, Secure Collaboration Across Organizational Boundaries with ‘Geneva’ Beta 2

MS_CodeNameGeneva2 One of the biggest challenges facing ISVs how to deal with the identity of the users and what information they are allowed to have access to. When you add the idea of securing access between organizations, it gets more complex. But users want single sign on. They don’t really want to have to log in using separate credentials. And they want their identity to work across multiple vendors.

‘Geneva’ Beta 2 Announced

Enter Microsoft Code-Name “Geneva,” our open platform that dramatically simplifies user access and secure collaboration across organizational boundaries. Geneva has entered Beta 2 as announced on the Forefront team blog posting, Microsoft code-name “Geneva” Beta 2 Now Available.

The new beta introduces new features, such as the seamless integration with Visual Studio, which make even easier for developers to take advantage of identity capabilities without being exposed to unnecessary complexity; or the new claims transformation language, which gives unprecedented expressive power to system administrators.

For ISVs, Geneva has three parts. You can download beta 2 code for all three components of “Geneva:”

  • The "Geneva" Server for IT professionals to transform claims and other tokens, manage user access, and enables federation.
  • The "Geneva" Framework for developers to build claims-aware .NET applications.
  • Windows CardSpace "Geneva” for developers to provide end users with secure online identity management.

The Geneva Framework was formerly known as Zermatt.

With beta 2 we’re announcing interoperability between “Geneva” and identity & access solutions from leading partners, via the SAML 2.0 and WS-Federation standards. Interoperable partner solutions include CA Federation Manager and CA SiteMinder, Novell Access Manager, SAP NetWeaver and Sun’s OpenSSO Enterprise and Fedlet software.

“Geneva” addresses a number of important customer challenges:

  • Implementing cross-organization single sign on
  • Accessing hosted and cloud services
  • Developing identity-aware applications
  • Simplifying access management

You can download Beta 2 of ‘Geneva’ from Evaluate Microsoft Code Name “Geneva” beta 2 today.

For more information about ‘Geneva’, see Microsoft Code-named ‘Geneva’.

For more information about about our efforts to help customers maintain security with cloud infrastructure, see Cloud Security.

“Geneva” is slated for release in the second half of 2009.

Identity Developer Training Kit

clip_image002[4]The Identity Developer Training Kit is a set of hands-on labs and resources designed to help developers to take advantage of Microsoft’s identity products and services. Being designed for developers, the kit focuses on the Geneva Framework: however it also gives guidance on how to take advantage of Geneva Server, Windows Live ID, the Microsoft Federation Gateway and the .NET Access Control Service (which is featured in a renewed and expanded lab). Most of the tasks are demonstrated both for ASP.NET web applications and for WCF services. We went to great lengths for eliminating as much as possible the friction that is traditionally associated with security samples, by providing configuration scripts and tools which automate many of the setup steps.

Concepts and ideas are introduced gradually: but the training kit authors made sure that every single step is useful for solving a real-life problem. You will not have to wait for seeing the value that the product/service/approach delivers.

To download, see Identity Developer Training Kit.

The Id Element Show

clip_image001The Id Element show on Channel 9 delivers a video per week on identity. The interviews published until now had the purpose of introducing the base ideas and provide a basic overview of the products. This week you can see a burst of 4 videos dedicated to the news in beta 2. Here’s the content on Geneva Framework and the Geneva Server with two introductory interviews and two deep dives: