The Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is a multi-tenant cloud based directory and identity management service.
It provides IT Admins with a solution that enables them to give employees and business partners single sign-on access to several cloud SaaS apps.
The Azure AD also helps application developers integrate their applications easily and quickly in millions of organizations around the world.
For the last couple of months, Microsoft has been working on the Azure AD business-to-business (B2B) collaboration set and now the company has announced its general availability in a blog post.
What is Azure AD B2B?
Azure AD B2B is a set of collaboration capabilities which allows organizations to work with users from other organizations through Azure AD. Organizations using Azure AD can provide their B2B partners with documents, applications, and resources while maintaining control over corporate data.
In the announcement blog post, Alex Simons, the Director of Program Management for the Microsoft Identity Division, says that “Customer demand for these capabilities is sky high! Already during the public preview, customers have invited 2.6M guest users using these new capabilities.”
Here is a list of the key benefits of Azure AD B2B:
- “Work with any user from any partner
- Partners use their own credentials
- No requirement for partners to use Azure AD
- No external directories or complex set-up required
- Simple and secure collaboration
- Provide access to any corporate app or data, while applying sophisticated, Azure AD-powered authorization policies
- Seamless user experiences
- Enterprise-grade security for apps and data”
In addition, thanks to Azure AD B2B, users won’t have to manage overhead. The set of capabilities allows organizations to work without having to manage external accounts or passwords.
No sync or manual account lifecycle management is needed, and there is no need for overhead external administrative.
Azure AD B2B capabilities
As mentioned above, Azure AD B2B offers a huge set of collaboration capabilities, from delegating to app and group owners, to protecting an organization’s corporate content.
Here is a quick list of what you can do with Azure AD B2B:
- Add B2B collaboration (guest) users in the Azure portal
- Enable your collaborators to bring their own identity
- Delegate to application and group owners
- Protect your corporate content thanks to authorization policies
- Use our APIs and sample code to easily build applications to onboard
To learn more about Azure AD B2B, check Microsoft’s video gallery below:
