FIM integrates with Active Directory and Exchange Server to provide identity synchronization, certificate management, user password resets, and user provisioning from a single interface.
Part of the Microsoft Identity and Access Management platform product line, FIM superseded Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager (ILM),[1] and was known as ILM 2 during development.
ILM 2007 was created by merging Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 (MIIS) and Certificate Lifecycle Manager (CLM).
[2] FIM 2010 R2 (Release 2) was released in June 2012 and has extra capabilities: Forefront Identity Manager introduces the concept of "codeless provisioning",[3] which allows administrators to create objects in any connected data source without writing any code in one of the .NET Framework languages.
The codeless provisioning provided in FIM should be able to sustain most of the simple to medium complexity scenarios for account lifecycle management.