Identity Lifecycle Manager “2” Schedule Update

Microsoft is providing an update on the timing of the ILM “2” release. The solution is now on target for release in the first quarter of 2010 and we will deliver a new Release Candidate (RC1) in the third quarter of this year.

Our current Release Candidate program has been successful with thousands of customer downloads.  A variety of customers have told us that innovative features like desktop based self-service capabilities and centralized IT tools will allow them to increase the reach of identity and access management across their enterprises. They plan to use ILM “2”  in a wide variety of situations and scenarios.

We have been working closely with a number of early adopter customers, in both public and private sectors, as well as our own internal Microsoft IT (MSIT). As we are getting closer to completing the development of ILM "2" we want to ensure a positive migration, deployment and management experience for all customers. To ensure high quality, usability and customer satisfaction ILM "2" needs to be validated in long-running live deployments before release.

With the new RC1 we will deliver additional deployment and management tools, along with expanded documentation, providing:

·         A clear migration path from RC1 to RTM.

·         Improved policy management.

·         The ability to easily migrate deployments from test to production environments.

·         Enabling self-service password reset on Windows XP Service Pack 2 in addition to Service Pack 3.