As Don Schmidt wrote this morning, Microsoft’s “Geneva” Identity Server product will support the SAML 2.0 protocol. Specifically, we will be supporting the SAML 2.0 IdP Lite and SP Lite profiles and the US Government GSA profile. Customers had told us that these SAML profiles are important to them and we’re responding to that feedback by implementing them in “Geneva” Server. Those of you who were at Kim Cameron’s “Identity Roadmap for Software + Services” presentation at the PDC got to see Vittorio Bertocci demonstrate SAML federation with “Geneva” Server to a site running IBM’s Tivoli Federated Identity Manager.

The “Geneva” Server is the successor to Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). It will, of course, interoperate with existing ADFS and other federation implementations using the WS-Federation protocol. In addition, it adds WS-Trust support for issuing Information Cards, letting it work with Windows CardSpace and other Identity Selectors.

I’ll add that the SAML 2.0 support doesn’t stop with the server. SAML 2.0 is also supported by the “Geneva” Identity Framework — a .NET application development framework formerly known as “Zermatt” and “IDFX”, which likewise also supports WS-Federation and WS-Trust. In short, the same identity development framework components that are being used to build “Geneva” Server will be available to all .NET developers as the “Geneva” Identity Framework.

Finally, I’ll close by thanking the folks on the Internet 2 Shibboleth project, IBM, and Ping Identity who helped us with early interop testing of our code. You have been valuable and responsive partners in this effort, helping us make sure that what we’re building truly interoperates with other SAML 2.0 implementations deployed in the wild.