FIM Lives! UAG Lives! TMG will not

Today Microsoft announced the discontinuing or subsuming of many products in the Forefront line 

To be crystal clear Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) and Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG) live on as separate products with ongoing investment!

Insert the obligatory Mark Twain quote here. “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated”

Product	Fate
Forefront Identity Manager (FIM)	Lives on. R2 was just released in June
Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG)	Lives on. SP 2 just released in August
Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG)	Discontinued as of Dec1 2012 – support available until April 14, 2015 (extended until 2020) Use DirectAccess and RRAS to provide VPN functionality or switch to UAG.
Forefront Threat Management Gateway Web Protection Services(TMG WPS)	Discontinued as of Dec 1 2012. I hadn’t even heard of this offshoot.
Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP) before that it was Client Security (FCS)	Previously announced as System Center Endpoint Protection (SCEP)
Forefront Protection for Exchange Server (FPE)	Becomes part of Exchange Server 2013
Forefront Protection for SharePoint Server  (FPSP) Forefront Protection for Office Communication Server (FSOCS)	SharePoint and Lync Servers will continue to offer the built-in security capabilities that many customers use to protect shared documents
Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE)	Is now Exchange Online Protection.

I think it is safe to say that we are seeing the Forefront brand being disbanded.

I wonder what new names they will come up with for Forefront Identity Manager and Forefront Unified Access Gateway. I guess we will have to wait and see which family of products adopts them.

FIM Best Practices Volume 1 has been updated for R2

Just this morning I have published the updated for R2 edition of FIM Best Practices Volume 1. Now called FIM R2 Best Practices Volume 1: Introduction, Architecture And Installation Of Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2. The EBook edition is in color!

Print Edition of FIM R2 Best Practices Volume 1 is still B/W

Go to the lulu.com home page to get a coupon code for 20% off (offer expires 11:59 PM Sept 7 2012).

Updates (over 50 pages more content than before, now at 319 pages, plus lots of revision):

• New screenshots at every step of the way.
• Over 260 Figures.
• 36 Code Fragments
• 49 tables
• The architecture discussion covers the new components, Reporting, BHOLD, and Password Reset.
• Installing the FIM Password Reset Portal, the FIM Password Registration Portal, Installing the reporting component. 
• Added sample scripts so that almost every step has an option for performing it in scripted fashion.
• Redesigned the flow of the Service Accounts, Groups, SPNs and aliases to make it easier to follow and to hand off those portions to others. In fact parts of the book read like a “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” book guiding you to skip past sections that are irrelevant for your particular case.
• The section on SPNs has been completely re-written to provide an even better explanation of Kerberos and SPNs, but also the ability to jump right to what needs to be done for those that already know the concepts.
• The chapter on Pre-requisites covers using SharePoint Foundation 2010.
• The Chapter on updating FIM is much expanded to help you deal with Roll Back scenarios.
• Added several more bits of humor to see if you are still awake.