As an administrator, you have many users in your user stores that require access to many different web applications. In the past, you had to perform complex steps to configure identity federation between Access Manager and different web applications, depending on the authentication protocol. The identity federation allowed you to provide single sign-on (SSO) to your users. For more information, see Federated Authentication
in the NetIQ Access Manager 4.3 Administration Guide.
Access Manager now provides a simplified way to give the users secure, single sign-on (SSO) access to different web applications. Access Manager contains the Applications page, under Administration Tasks in the Administration Console that allows you to configure basic single sign-on and SAML 2.0 applications.
Access Manager uses connectors to establish the connection between Access Manager and the applications. The User Portal page displays the applications as appmarks that the system automatically creates when you configure the connector for the application. For more information about appmarks, see Configuring Appmarks
in the NetIQ Access Manager 4.3 Administration Guide.
There are different types of connectors that allow you to connect the applications.