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The latest issue of the Architecture Journal is available for download here (I am breaking the news even before the rest of the pages are updated from issue 15 to issue16: see how much I care about you?;-)). What makes this especially interesting is that issue 16 is entirely dedicated to identity! I have to admit that I've yet to read most of the articles, but I've definitely went through 2 of them: One is an interview/profile with Kim Cameron. It's a nice read, and I am sure you'll enjoy to know more about Kim The other is an article from yours truly, titled "Claims and Identity, On-Premise and Cloud Solutions". It expands on this post , and rolls in various others Writing for the Architecture Journal is a big honor, as you can see from the list of high profile former contributors, and I am very grateful to Diego for having my article in this issue. Thanks man! And thanks also to Gianpaolo , with whom I had many deep discussions that helped me to keep the abstraction tangents to what i hope is an acceptable level :-) As usual, if you have feedback feel free to send it my way Read More...
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Well, it's almost one month since I wrote the last " useful " posts : you would not believe how incredibly busy I am on stuff I can't talk about just yet (but soon, very soon). In this quick update I am excited to report that I am going to speak at TechEd New Zealand & TechEd Australia ! As strange as it may sound, the 114 flights I've boarded since I moved to Corp (October 2005) never took me under the equatorial line; furthermore, it's since first grade that I'm told how cool it is that New Zealand is at the exact antipodes of Italy, has roughly a boot shape as well, etc... that's the farthest place from home I can travel to without leaving the planet :-) I am going to deliver 2 sessions , both in NZ and in AU: Identity & Cloud Services (Architecture track, level 300) The shift towards cloud computing is one of the major trends in today’s IT industry. As resources and assets are increasingly hosted off-premise, traditional strategies for access control and identity management are proving incapable of handling distributed scenarios and cross-boundary communication. This presentation briefly outlines how architectures relying on claims-based identity management, security tokens and open standards can address cloud computing scenarios with the same ease with which they can handle traditional ones. The identity capabilities of Biztalk Services will be featured as a concrete example of an application of the new paradigm. “Zermatt” Developer Framework: Putting Authentication Read More...
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On a flight between Seattle and Tokyo. I've just put down The Big Switch , and decided it's time to write about cloud computing and how identity management is going to play a key role for the success of the new paradigm. As you go though this post, please remember that (as always) you are reading my personal opinions/views and not a press release from my employer :-) Cloud Computing: a nanointroduction The word "Cloud" is well on its way to be one of the most hyped & overloaded term in the recent history of IT: just enter "Cloud Computing" in your search engine of choice and be prepared to navigate a huge result set. A good way of ramping up on the topic would be to read the recent Forrester report " Is Cloud Computing Ready for the Enterprise? "; or, if you are less technical, you can start by reading the aforementioned The Big Switch (as long as you read those *** grano salis , without ever turning off your critical thinking module). For the purpose of understanding this post, I'll give you here my usual oversimplified stance: Cloud Computing is mainly a new deployment model. Let's say you are the solution architect of an enterprise, and you are in the process of setting up a new capability for your company. As usual, the two big alternatives are build the solution yourself, buy it as a service if available or all the intermediate approaches which combine the two. If you decide to build even just a little piece of the solution, you are implicitly stepping up for running Read More...
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On the 23rd I'll be in Singapore, practically my third home, and will present at the Singapore's Regional Architect Forum (the famous RAF). There is something in that country that charmed me already during my first visit in '89, and every time I have half a chance I try to go visit. Meeting my good pal Linda is certainly one of the things I like of going to Singapore: you would no believe the staggering amount of great work she gets done, all without ever losing her smile :-) A close second would be the levels of the customers & the industry in general there. Singapore's IT is often ahead of the curve, which makes it a perfect audience for very new ideas and approaches. That's why I am looking forward to present on S+S, cloud services and how the new paradigms are already affecting the way in which we deal with identity management. I will also give a chalktalk about the internet service bus , I hope to elicit some deep discussion and explore with Singapore's architects the implications of architecting solutions with tools like the ISB (without ever forgetting the identity aspect, of course). Also in this case Gianpaolo will present on S+S. I am sure he will provide a lot of food for thought, I can't think of anybody more qualified for explaining the topic. besides, his sessions are always fun :-) see you there! Read More...
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Almost one year ago I briefly mentioned the Biztalk Service SDK, here and here . A new version has recently been made available: you would not believe the amount of new features that were added to it in this timeframe. The main reason of excitement for me is that this new release supports managed cards ! It's a bit late at night here in Redmond and the drowsiness makes me feel less than bright right now, so I better defer detailed explanations to tomorrow (or the weekend). Anyway, for the identirati tuned in, this basically means that the service bus offers a R-STS that will accept, among many other means of authentication, also third party's managed cards. The behavior of the R-STS can be influenced by using the Biztalk Services identity portal , or by management API; you can translate attribute claims into authorization claims (if an incoming claim has a certain value you can issue a token which tells to the ultimate destination that the caller is authorized to perform the call; you can copy the input claims directly in the issued token so that the info is preserved; and so on). "Artist" rendering below: Again, I'll be more verbose in a later post: in fact, I plan to walk you through a sample that will make you hit the ground running exactly with that feature. The managed card support is the feature that I find most appealing ( surprised ?), but in fact there are many other great additions such as X509 authentication, REST management APIs, support for multiple languages ... Read More...
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Yesterday night I was going through the unresolved parts of the inbox, a fairly boring task, when Dennis rescued me: he chimed in via Messenger reminding me that a new version of the BizTalk Services SDK is out. It wasn't hard to switch my attention to something far more exciting, and I promptly installed it. If you had the old version of the SDK on your machine, I suggest uninstalling it before installing the new one. For the ones that were bold enough to play with the new binding at low level: the changes in the machine.config show how the assembly hierarchy and the object model changed: <!-- <system.serviceModel> <bindings> <relayBinding> <binding name="metadataExchangeRelayBinding" /> </relayBinding> </bindings> <client> <endpoint address="" binding="relayBinding" bindingConfiguration="metadataExchangeRelayBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange" name="net.relay" /> <metadata> <policyImporters> <extension type="Microsoft.ServiceModel.Relay.Description.RelayBindingElementImporter, Microsoft.ServiceModel.Relay, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" /> </policyImporters> <wsdlImporters> <extension type="Microsoft.ServiceModel.Relay.Description.RelayBindingImporter, Microsoft.ServiceModel.Relay, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" /> <extension type="Microsoft.ServiceModel.Relay.Description.RelayBindingElementImporter, Microsoft.ServiceModel.Relay, Read More...
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Dennis announces the CTP of the Biztalk Services, one of the webbyest CTP we have: those are actually services, the only thing you need (if you want a quick start) is the SDK . There is much to be said about this new release, and I hope I'll be able to play with it soon (dear Editor, don't worry: I know I have to send the next chapter first :-)). However, I think that the most exciting news is in the following Dennis words: "your service opens at a URI on the connect.biztalk.net machines. Then a client connects to that URI and can start sending messages. We don’t want to be in the way of your app, so our relay will immediately try to establish a direct connection between clients" See? True P2P! What are you doing still reading this post, aren't you toying with it yet? :-) BTW, take a close look to the Identity Selector in the screenshot in Dennis' post: I'm sure that the loyal readers of this blog will recognize some of the cards (thanks James for pointing this out!) Read More...
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