July 2008

Foreword

Dear Architect,

In the previous issue of the Journal, weexplored the role of the architect across a number of dimensions. After being theeditor of the Journal for 10 issues, I myself have accepted a new role leadingthe Platform Architecture Team here at Microsoft. I would like to introduce thenew editor-in-chief of the Microsoft Architecture Journal, Diego Dagum. Diegohas a long career as an architect and is the current editor behind the MSDNarchitecture center. Please join me in welcoming Diego to the new role aseditor-in-chief; and, as always, we welcome all your feedback at editors@architecturejournal.net

Simon Guest

Two years ago, when an article of mine about evolvingarchitectures was published in an independent IT magazine, a colleague said tome, “You should write for The Architecture Journal.”I couldn’t have predicted that I would now find myself writing for thismagazine as its editor. I want to thank Simon Guest for this opportunity andthese big shoes to fill; during his tenure, readership has more than doubled,increasing from 30,000 to 62,000+.

In this issue, we invite you to think about the identityarchitecture in your organization. Identity management today is evolving fromthe single, isolated scenario to a federated one, in ways that might surpriseyou.

We begin this sixteenth journey with Fernando Gebara Filho’sintroduction to identity concepts and strategies, how they have evolved and theroad ahead. Next, Jesus Rodriguez and Joe Klug examine an assortment ofstrategies for making identity a first-class citizen in the portfolio offederated applications. Gerrit van der Geest and Carmen de Ruijter Korverconsider the challenge of establishing an application-level trust environment,as user identities, in a service-oriented world, must flow from a serviceconsumer to a provider.

For this issue’s profile, we caught up with Kim Cameron, authorof “The Laws of Identity,” whose ideas on federated identities are shaping thenext generation of Microsoft identity technologies. (A funny thing happened theday I visited Kim for this interview: I forgot my ID badge, so I needed Kim to“certify” my identity to the lobby.)

Resuming our journey, Mario Szpuszta describes how the Austrianhealthcare system turned an administrative provisioning crisis into a clearopportunity for creating an open identity federation. Then Vittorio Bertocciexplains how architectural patterns allow us to build claim-aware solutions, sothat when the cloud arrives to companies, identity management won’t necessarilylook cloudy.

Finally, Mike Morley and Barry Lawrence reveal how theysynchronized identities on multiple systems and legacy applications from asingle administrative console through a consolidating framework.

Dear reader, I’d like to be the first to welcome you to theissue, and hope that you’ll identify with thearticles within. Enjoy!

Diego Dagum

Articles in This Issue

The Evolving Role of the Identity:From the Lone User to the Internet

by Fernando Gebara Filho

A report on how identitytechnologies have evolved to accommodate current needs, and what the challengesare from here to the future.

Federated Identity Patterns in a Service-OrientedWorld

by Jesus Rodriguez and Joe Klug

A sequence of strategiesintended to make applications trust each other. How scenarios challenge thereal success of each strategy and what can we do to address those challenges.

Managing Identity Trust for AccessControl

by Gerrit J. van der Geest andCarmen de Ruijter Korver

A reference architecture for themanagement of Identity Trust within the context of Identity and AccessManagement.

ArchitectureJournal Profile: Kim Cameron

Kim Cameron is an Identityarchitect at Microsoft Corp. Learn what the founder of “the Laws of Identity”has to say about his career.

Federated Identity and Healthcare

by Mario Szpuszta

A real-world example offederated identifi cation implemented in the Austrian National HealthcareSystem.

Claims and Identity: On-Premise and CloudSolutions

by Vittorio Bertocci

How the lessons learned from currentefforts on federated identities are determining upcoming trends in cloud-hostedapplications.

Enterprise Identity SynchronizationArchitecture

by Mike Morley and BarryLawrence

A case study on smartprovisioning strategies for controlled and legacy environments.

Download this issue here

This article was published in the Architecture Journal, a printand online publication produced by Microsoft. For more articles from thispublication, please visit the ArchitectureJournal Web site.