My first session at the Best Practices SharePoint Conference was Re-architecting Search Solutions with SharePoint’s New Federation Features. The slide deck for the presentation can be found here: Download PowerPoint
Daniel Webster made an excellent point after the session regarding one type of scenario where federated features would be valuable to an organization: when dealing with HIPAA or other regulatory guidelines that specifically require the isolation of data. SharePoint already allows for data and security isolation. Federation allows administrators to follow isolation requirements while also allowing for findability within those requirements in both isolated and integrated farm environments.
I hope the session was useful for those that attended.