Microsoft's forthcoming Longhorn Server operating system is
scheduled to fold several identity services into Active
Directory.
Active Directory currently allows network administrators to set
policies for groups of users, and to centrally deploy new
applications to many computers.
"Longhorn will see the domain controller role that customers
historically thought about with Active Directory become just one of
the roles," Mike Atalla, a group product manager for Microsoft's
identity and access product group, told vnunet.com in an interview
at the RSA Conference in San
Francisco.
Longhorn Server is slated for availability by the end of this year.
The software will add identity, certificate and rights management
services as well as federation management services to Active
Directory.
Identity and certificate services allow administrators to manage
user accounts and the digital certificates that allow them to
access certain services and systems.
Rights management services let users set limitations on information
that they create, for instance to prevent an email being forwarded
beyond the original recipient.
Federation management services enable companies to share
credentials with partners and customers, allowing a consultant to
use his company username and password to log in on a client's
network.
Although these services are available in Windows Server 2003, they
currently exist as standalone services and do not work
together.
Companies have to set up separate user accounts if an outside
consultant needs to be able to receive messages governed by rights
management services, for example.
Bundling the services under Active Directory allows users to
combine federated identity and digital management services, as well
as any other Active Directory services.
The Longhorn enhancements are driven by Microsoft's vision for an
identity meta system designed to allow services and systems to
connect and interoperate regardless of their underlying
technologies.
Consumers received the first part of this meta system as the
InfoCard digital identity service that ships as part of Windows
Vista.
Longhorn Server will provide some of the infrastructure components,
but Atalla estimated that it will take up to five years for the
vision to be fully implemented.
Microsoft will focus in the next phase on building tools that allow
IT staff and developers to more easily manage identities and
services.
These services will allow IT staff to set boundaries within which
users can reset their own passwords, for instance, or create
internal mailing lists with no outside assistance.
"Empowering the IT professional will always be part of the identity
management challenges," said Atalla.
"But empowering the end user to do the right things with the right
tools when they need to do them is going to be a huge focus. It is
an important gap in the identity management space today."