The Concept of Federation

Microsoft Personal Services Group Vice President Bob Muglia explained the concept of “federation” at the 2001 Microsoft Professional Developers’ Conference:

The concept of federation is one that’s been in existence in computer science for many years and there are lots of examples of federated systems, but the basic idea is that you have a set of independent systems that know how to cooperate and work with each other. That’s true both at the technical level in terms of the way they technically work with each other, but it’s also true in terms of the policies and the operating procedures that exist between these different organizations. The idea is to allow a decentralization of ownership and control of information, while getting the effects of centralization in terms of the experience that the end user has.

Now, there are some great examples of federated systems today. E-mail is one system on the Internet that works super well that’s a federated system. The Internet itself with DNS as its underpinning is effectively a federated system, and in terms of higher level applications a great example are the automatic teller machines that exist in banks.