Windows Azure AppFabric Release of Caching, Single Sign-on for Access Control Service
Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president, .NET Developer Platform, has announced the first release of Windows Azure AppFabric Caching service and a release of a new version of the Access Control Service. The announcement was made at his keynote during MIX11.
The Windows Azure AppFabric Caching is a distributed, in-memory, application cache service that accelerates the performance of Windows Azure and SQL Azure applications.
The new version of the Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control service adds all the great capabilities that provide a Single-Sign-On experience to applications by integrating with standards-based identity providers, including enterprise directories such as Active Directory, and web identities such as Windows Live ID, Google, Yahoo! and Facebook.
Both of these services have been available for several months as Community Technology Preview (CTP) and have gained a lot of interest, and now you can start promoting them to customers as production services with full SLAs.
Access Control was released on April 7 and Caching will be released at the end of April.
Both services have a promotion period of a few months in which you can start using them with no charge.
We will be disclosing final pricing details of the Caching service along with the commercial release at the end of April.
About MIX
In its sixth year, MIX was created to foster a sustained conversation between Microsoft and Web designers and developers. This year’s event offers two days of keynotes streamed live and approximately 130 sessions available for download, all at https://live.visitmix.com.
About Windows Azure AppFabric Caching
Caching provides a distributed, in-memory, application cache service for Windows Azure and SQL Azure applications. It provides applications with high-speed access, scale, and high availability, to application data. These capabilities are provided entirely as a service (no installation or management of instances, dynamically increase/decrease cache size as needed).
About Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control
Access Control provides an easy way to provide identity and access control to web applications and services, while integrating with standards-based identity providers, including enterprise directories such as Active Directory®, and web identities such as Windows Live ID, Google, Yahoo! and Facebook.
The service enables authorization decisions to be pulled out of the application and into a set of declarative rules that can transform incoming security claims into claims that applications understand. These rules are defined using a simple and familiar programming model, resulting in cleaner code. It can also be used to manage users’ permissions, saving the effort and complexity of developing these capabilities.
Getting Started with Windows Azure
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Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation