Windows Identity Foundation RTM!

Hello from PDC09 Day 1 keynote! It is my pleasure to let you know that Bob Muglia just announced the general availability of Windows Identity Foundation. Get it while it’s hot!

Almost exactly 2 years ago I had the honor of giving the first sneak-peak of what at the time we called the ADFS “2” project, which during PDC08 was officially announced under the codename “Geneva”.

With “Geneva” we collectively indicated one developer product (“Geneva” Framework, now Windows Identity Foundation), one server product (“Geneva” Server, now Active Directory Federation Services v2) and one end-user one (Windows CardSpace “Geneva”, now Windows CardSpace 2). Today we put in your hands the first component of the former “Geneva” platform, and I am personally thrilled that is the one for developers 🙂

We had a fantastic beta program, receiving tons of good feedback which made its way in the product: what you get today is the first of its kind, and is the answer to the need expressed by so many of you of handling identity and access in .NET applications in consistent & easy way. As you heard me say so many times in my presentations in the last year, the time of hand weaving is over: now you can start to experience the power of the claims-based approach directly in your apps!

You can find the official announcement on the Forefront blog: furthermore, before leaving for Berlin/L.A. I was lucky enough to capture a short impression of Conrad Bayer, Director of Program Management for Identity and Access, and get his comments on this release for the Id Element.

All our content has been updated to work with Windows Identity Foundation RTM, and we created some new interesting deliverables: watch this blog and/or my twitter for the next few hours!