Microsoft finally is starting to share publicly its high-level cloud-centric identity management plans, as my ZDNet blogging colleague John Fontana noted last week. That means the semi-mysterious Windows Azure Active Directory (WAAD) service is finally fair game for discussion.

I blogged about WAAD — Microsoft’s cloud version of its Active Directory directory service — earlier this year. Although Microsoft had a public-facing page about WAAD on its Azure site (which it subsequently removed), officials declined to comment on the technology when I asked in February. And members of the Microsoft cloud community said they were not at liberty to share specifics because of non-disclosure agreements.