Microsoft Azure - Forefront Identity Manager

Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) is an identity management software that manages the user’s profiles on premises of the organization. It is also known as Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM) or Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager (MFIM). We discussed about Azure Active Directory in this tutorial earlier. FIM is an on-premise version of Azure Active Directory. This software was in existence long before Windows Azure services were launched. As the cloud services evolved, there was a need of user’s profile management in Azure as well. Thus, Microsoft improved the software with the ability to link it with the Azure Active Directory.

Imagine a situation in which a company has their partial data or extended infrastructure on the cloud. This brings up the need of providing access to end user’s on both the locations (on-premise and cloud). FIM lets the users access the data on cloud securely. It also handles the synchronization. It is a very easy interface to create users, set password, and authorize users to reset their own passwords.

Experts find FIM less complex and easy to operate as compared to other identity management software. Also it is easy to use synchronies and use in the environment where Microsoft products are being used.

FIM can be connected to Azure Active Directory using the tool Forefront Identity Manager Connector for Windows Azure Active Directory. This tool helps to synchronize the data on-premise in FIM to the Azure Active Directory.

Once you have downloaded and installed the tool, you have to simply follow the wizard, in order to connect your FIM information with on-cloud Azure Active Directory.