The company plans to integrate its security and identity products under the Forefront brand, offer software-as-a-service versions and present it all as a layered defense of access and control for its corporate infrastructure software.

The resulting security layer also will incorporate third-party tools linked to a common control panel Microsoft is developing called . Thursday, the company released Beta 2 of Sterling and plans to ship the final version early in 2010.

Microsoft will further dissect the plan, which uses Active Directory as its foundation, at next week's RSA Conference under the marketing banner Business Ready Security.

But while the story will be told at RSA, the work integrating, refining and releasing all the moving parts will be no short-term task.

"It is a bit much to bring together into a coherent technology architecture," said Earl Perkins, an analyst with Gartner. "This is an attempt to bring everything together with a common theme and message because Microsoft is convinced that identity is a part of security. On the positive side, they are trying to bring together relevant resources under one organizational arm, but the rest of it could be hit and miss."