Today I’m excited to announce a major update to ACS. It’s available in our labs environment: http://portal.appfabriclabs.com. Keep in mind that there is no SLA around this release, but accounts and usage of the service are free while it is in the labs environment.

This release includes many of the features I discussed late last year: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/justinjsmith/archive/2009/09/28/access-control-service-roadmap-for-pdc-and-beyond.aspx. Here’s a snapshot of what’s in this release:

• Integrates with Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) and tooling
• Out-of-the-box support for popular web identity providers including: Windows Live ID, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook
• Out-of-the-box support for Active Directory Federation Server v2.0
• Support for OAuth WRAP, WS-Trust, and WS-Federation protocols
• Support for the SAML 1.1, SAML 2.0, and Simple Web Token (SWT) token formats
• Integrated and customizable Home Realm Discovery that allows users to choose their identity provider
• An OData-based Management Service that provides programmatic access to ACS configuration
• A Web Portal that allows administrative access to ACS configuration

There’s quite a bit more information available on our CodePlex project: http://acs.codeplex.com. There you will find documentation, screencasts, samples, readmes, an issue tracker, and discussion lists.

Also check out the Channel 9 video at http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Identity/Introducing-the-new-features-of-the-August-Labs-release-of-the-Access-Control-Service.

Like always, I encourage you to check it out and let the team know what you think.