News

Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2 SP1 Released

Service Pack 1 for Microsoft's Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2 (FIM 2010 R2) product was released earlier this month to Microsoft's volume licensing and professional services subscribers, such as TechNet and MSDN members, according to a Microsoft blog post.

FIM 2010 R2 is Microsoft's non-cloud-based identity management solution for use "across heterogeneous systems," according to Microsoft's description. It's designed to help automate the management of user identities in organizations that want to control user access to data. That's typically done by assigning "roles" to users and setting rights.

The new service pack for FIM 2010 R2 mainly delivers some up-to-date capabilities that correspond with some of Microsoft's newer flagship products, such as Windows Server 2012, Windows 8, SQL Server 2012 and SharePoint Foundation 2013, among others. SP1 is arriving about six months after Microsoft released FIM 2010 R2 back in June.

In September, Microsoft gave notice of a major reorganization of the Forefront enterprise security product line, with some products being discontinued or renamed. However, Microsoft indicated that two products would continue to be sold, namely Forefront Unified Access Gateway 2010 SP2 and FIM 2010 R2. The restructuring may reflect a shift toward more cloud-based security solutions on Microsoft's behalf, according to analyst speculation.

Possibly another name change is in the works for FIM 2010 R2, which could get branded under the Windows Azure or System Center product lines, according to speculation in a Forefront Blog post by Stefan van der Wiele, who is a security engineer with Amsterdam-based Microsoft IT solutions partner Wortell.

Microsoft is touting a few FIM 2010 R2 performance improvements with the new service pack. Roles provisioning enabled via the Microsoft BHOLD Suite SP1 is beefed up. For instance, the old provisioning model got replaced in SP1 with an "access management connector." This connector reduces the number of management agents needed to work with SQL Server, for instance. The connector also makes it easier to handle users that belong to "more than one orgunit in the FIM metaverse," according to Microsoft's TechNet library article on BHOLD Suite SP1. Those efforts reflect Microsoft integration of BHOLD Software assets that Microsoft acquired in September 2011.

Before applying the service pack, Microsoft seems to be recommending an upgrade to newer server applications first, according to the release notes. A couple of hotfixes need to be applied to enable it to work with Internet Explorer 10. For those testing an installation of SP1, Microsoft has published a test lab guide for FIM 2010 R2 here, as well one for the BHOLD connector here. There's also a download page for language packs for FIM 2010 R2.

Microsoft also gave notice this month that it plans to remove some features from the FIM 2010 and FIM 2010 R2 products associated with the synchronization service in a future product release.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

Featured

  • Microsoft Appoints Althoff as New CEO for Commercial Business

    Microsoft CEO and chairman Satya Nadella on Wednesday announced the promotion of Judson Althoff to CEO of the company's commercial business, presenting the move as a response to the dramatic industrywide shifts caused by AI.

  • Broadcom Revamps VMware Partner Program Again

    Broadcom recently announced a significant update regarding its VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program, coinciding with the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, a key component in Broadcom’s private cloud strategy.

  • Closeup of the new Copilot keyboard key

    Microsoft Updates Copilot To Add Context-Sensitive Agents to Teams, SharePoint

    Microsoft has rolled out a new public preview for collaborative "always on" agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, bringing enhanced, context-aware tools into Teams channels, meetings, SharePoint sites, Planner workstreams and Viva Engage communities.

  • Windows 365 Cloud Apps Now Available for Public Preview

    Microsoft announced this week that Windows 365 Cloud Apps are now available for public preview. This aims to allow IT administrators to stream individual Windows applications from the cloud, removing the need to assign Cloud PCs to every user.