In case you haven’t heard Zoomit VIA or rather Microsoft MetaDirectory Services has been renamed yet again, from Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 to Identity Lifecycle Manager 2007 to Forefront Identity Manager 2010 or FIM for short. For obvious reasons the L was dropped when the F was added (Forefront + ILM = FILM).

So ILM 2 => FIM 2010

(stole this graphic from Brad Turner’s blog – his Smart Art creations are beautiful – recently I have been studying smart art under his tutelage I hope to soon approach his level of skill)

Doug Leland, general manager of Microsoft’s Identity and Security Business Group, explained, “For example, our Identity Lifecycle Manager product is now officially named Forefront Identity Manager. We see the Forefront brand as synonymous with Business Ready Security.”

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/Apr09/04-16BusinessReadySecurity.mspx

From Microsoft MetaDirectory Services (MMS) to MIIS was a complete rewrite dumping Zscript for .NET and putting the metadirectory in the SQL Server back end. ILM 2007 added the Certificate Lifecycle Management piece while leaving the core functionality of MIIS alone. FIM 2010 of course adds lots of new functionality (everything you have read about ILM 2, the portal for self-service, password reset, the web service) but good old MIIS is still there as the FIM Synchronization Engine, but there have been substantial improvements under the hood to enable synchronization rules to be configured in the portal and flow into the Sync Engine.

So what’s in a name some new features that according to Doug Leland spell Business Ready Security.

The Target date is still Q1 of calendar year 2010.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/IdentityLifecycleManagerilmBestPractices