[Active Directory] Active Directory from on-premises to the cloud

Windows Azure AD White Paper has been released.


Identity management, provisioning, role management, and authentication are key services both on-premises and through the (hybrid) cloud. With the Bring Your Own Apps (BYOA) for the cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, the desire to better collaborate a la Facebook with the “social” enterprise, the need to support and integrate with social networks, which lead to a Bring Your Own Identity (BYOI) trend, identity becomes a service where identity “bridges” in the cloud talk to on-premises directories or the directories themselves move and/or are located in the cloud.

Active Directory (AD) is a Microsoft brand for identity related capabilities. In the on-premises world, Windows Server AD provides a set of identity capabilities and services and is hugely popular (88% of Fortune 1000 and 95% of enterprises use AD). Windows Azure AD is AD reimagined for the cloud, designed to solve for you the new identity and access challenges that come with the shift to a cloud-centric, multi-tenant world.

Windows Azure AD can be truly seen as an Identity Management as a Service (IDMaaS) cloud multi-tenant service. This goes far beyond taking AD and simply running it within a virtual machine (VM) in Windows Azure.

To download this White Paper : Active Directory from on-premises to the cloud