Single Sign-On with SAML on Force.com - Jeff Douglas on the Force.com Blog

Jeff Douglas has posted a great article on Single Sign-On with SAML on Force.com:

"With the proliferation of SaaS and other web-based applications, identity management is becoming a major concern for businesses. Just think about the number of usernames and password you regularly type each day. You probably log into your company's network, portal, webmail, benefits system, Google Apps, bespoke applications and of course Force.com applications. Now multiply this by the number of users in your company and think about the support and security implications. You need dedicated resources to manage your identity store, respond to password reset requests, provision new users for each system and deactivate users that no longer need access. Just think of the number of man hours you could save if you could eliminate 25-50% of your passwords and their associated costs!

Implementing a Single Sign-On (SSO) infrastructure enables users to sign in once and have access to all authorized resources. In this article, we'll look at the different methods of implementing SSO with Force.com, how to set up your own open source identity management system for federated authentication using SAML 2, and how to configure the Force.com platform to utilize your new identify provider. We'll also provide some troubleshooting techniques and outline some best practices to help you avoid common roadblocks, getting you up and running fast..."

Read more at the Force.com Blog...