14 DAY TRIAL // There’s little doubt that with the increasing adoption of the Cloud and the explosive growth of mobile devices, companies need to adapt to the new ways in which their employees work. With users leveraging new computing form factors and opting to work remotely, providing access to business applications can be somewhat challenging.
But solutions do exist, such as single sign-on (SSO) between Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) and cloud applications running on Windows Azure.
Microsoft is even providing free guidance to developers to get them started along the path of enabling SSO.
A new whitepaper, titled Single Sign-On from Active Directory to a Windows Azure Application is now available for download free of charge from the software giant.
“This paper contains step-by-step instructions for using Windows® Identity Foundation, Windows Azure, and Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0 for achieving SSO across web applications that are deployed both on premises and in the cloud,” the Redmond company explained.
“Previous knowledge of these products is not required for completing the proof of concept (POC) configuration. This document is meant to be an introductory document, and it ties together examples from each component into a single, end-to-end example.”
The guidance is set up to allow devs to build applications supporting corporate user access via Active Directory.
In addition, AD is also leveraged for access to Windows Azure apps, with the same accounts allowing them to connect to the application from a mobile device.
Essentially, access is streamlined via SSO, regardless of the fact that it’s for internal users on the intranet or mobile and remote users that need access over the Internet.
“Once a user has authenticated to AD FS 2.0 within a browser session, they will not be prompted to authenticate again when they access federated applications—whether they are in the local intranet or hosted in the cloud.
“This is of great benefit to application users; increasing efficiency, improving security, and generally creating a more efficient and more productive workforce,” Microsoft added.