WS-Federation and other Web Services, an area where MS seem to be getting things right?
PC World talks a bit about Web Services for identity management. The list of vendors demonstrating interoperability, (Netegrity, Oblix, RSA Security, OpenNetwork Technologies, and Ping Identity), as well as MS and IBM is pretty impressive.
Web Services seems to be one of the few areas where MS seems to be getting its story straight, if my impression is correct:
1. Very involved in the standards process
2. Perhaps to the point of dominance of the standard process?
3. Building great tools and middleware in VS and Indigo, so that their platform is the best way to implement the standards
4. Building an innovative client environment for the caching and presentation of web services, WinFS and Avalon/WinFS Shell
5. Integrating Office and Collaboration processes with line of business processes,
That’s not to say that there are no problems in these products. But the story looks fairly coherent at least. Have a look at this MS document if you want more details.
