What is Federated Identity?

Based on virtualization, the federated identity approach enables more efficient  management and security for a distributed, complex infrastructure. Think of an abstraction layer that delivers a global view of the identity system, without necessarily storing the data, while still allowing the data to be managed locally by each authoritative system. This shields applications from the complexity of the underlying systems and streamlines IAM processes.

What are the benefits of Federated Identity?

Identity federation delivers a shared representation of all identities, mapped to a common schema, to reconcile an inflexible world of databases vs. directories, competing brands of directories, and custom APIs. This “common” infrastructure addresses many challenges faced with a heterogeneous infrastructure, decoupling applications from the underlying sources to quickly add flexibility, without having to rip and replace what already exists.