Official Name for "Geneva"

This Monday, Microsoft made several announcements at the Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. Among these announcements were the official names for the Geneva products currently in Beta.

The three components of Microsoft “Geneva” have the following names:

·         Active Directory Federation Services – formerly known as “Geneva” Server. Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) enables Active Directory to be an identity provider in the claims based access platform. AD FS provides end users a single sign-on experience across applications, platforms and organizations and simplifies identity management for IT Pros by reducing duplicate accounts.

·         Windows Identity Foundation – formerly known as “Geneva” Framework. Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) offers sets of APIs for ASP.NET and WCF developers to build claims-aware applications and make them federation capable. This API set covers both building relying party applications and federation services that can issue security tokens.

·         Windows CardSpace – same as current version. Windows CardSpace enables managed and native applications to participate in the claims-based access platform. Windows CardSpace empowers end-users to have better control of their identity and allows administrators to setup streamlined single sign-on access.

This news is part of our Business Ready Security strategy to help both partners and customers 1) protect everywhere and access anywhere, 2) integrate and extend security across the enterprise, and 3) simplify the security experience and manage compliance.

For more information about these announcements and others that were made, check out the Microsoft Forefront Team Blog.