Microsoft is on the verge of finally providing some pieces of software to back up its ambitious plan to integrate its security and identity technologies, but the company admits it is moving slower than it had anticipated.

"It is fair to say that getting this done in non-trivial," says Bob Muglia, president of Microsoft's server and tools business. "It is taking us perhaps a little longer in some areas then we would like, but we are pretty excited about the progress that we are seeing."

Muglia says Microsoft is in the final test phase with Forefront Identity Manager 2010, which is one foundational element of the security and identity integration. Identity Manager is slated to ship early next year, and was previously known as Identity Lifecycle Manager. "This ties together the identity management across an organization and enables the foundation for security configurations and security policies that run on top," he says.

Full story: InfoWorld