Microsoft announced product names for its latest claims-based identity management server platform, dropping the "Geneva" code name. The Geneva platform (once known as project "Zermatt") consists of three components, and Microsoft unveiled relatively straightforward product names for each. The name switch was announced on Monday at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.

Geneva Server will be called "Active Directory Federation Services" (ADFS). Essentially, ADFS is the same name used for Microsoft's current single sign-on federation product that's part of Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Server 2008.

The Geneva Framework used by developers will be called "Windows Identity Foundation" (WIF). Finally, Windows CardSpace, which helps with the management of access identities, will retain its same name...

The two biggest features of ADFS will be its claims-transform capability and its use of federation metadata, according to Donovan Follette, senior technical evangelist on Microsoft's Identity and Access technologies. The use of federation metadata makes it possible to configure relationships that used to take extra coding to establish...

Microsoft changed some of the nomenclature with the new ADFS product. "Account partners" in the old version are now called "identity providers," Follette said. "Resource partners" are now called "relying parties" because they rely on a token that ADFS will provide to them. The use of the "applications" term disappears in ADFS because they are just considered to be another form of relying parties. Lastly, "organizational claims" or mappings will become "rules" in ADFS...

The new ADFS product will be interoperable with earlier versions of that server, Follette said. It will support the same SAML and WS protocols as the earlier version, but adds token support for SAML 2.0, he added.

See the complete article by Kurt Mackie in RedmondDeveloper.