Internet-Facing Deployment (IFD) for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

The terms ‘IFD’ and ‘SPLA’ get thrown around in the same breath quite a bit so let’s clear up what the terms mean.

IFD – The acronym IFD stands for ‘Internet-Facing Deployment’ means that the functionality of the application is exposed externally outside the local network. The term usually refers to an On-Premise customer enabling forms authentication within their deployment to allow their employees to access the application away from work. The term IFD-enabled is used to specify a CRM Server that has forms authentication enabled on it.

SPLA – From Microsoft.com: “ The Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA) enables service providers and ISVs with a hosted offering to license Microsoft products on a monthly basis to provide services and hosted applications to their end customers.”

SPLA refers to forms authentication enabled on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Application so that Service Providers can host application for other customers. CRM is configured the same way for On-Premise IFD use and SPLA use although some features may be designed with a Service Provider implementation in mind.

Here is a video that explains IFD a bit more:

This video covers the end-to-end process for configuring IFD which includes:

1. Installing AD FS 2.0
2. Configuring the AD FS 2.0 federation server
3. Managing certificates
4. Configuring Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for claims-based authentication and IFD
5. Creating the relying party trust for CRM and configuring the claims rules on AD FS 2.0

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 26, 2011
  This is very helpful to understand how complex this has become.  

• Anonymous
  July 26, 2011
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 04, 2011
  Hi, i have a doubts about if it's possible connect a reverse proxy(Apache) to a  IFD Microsoft Dynamics On Premise or not? Thanks.