Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is Microsoft’s cloud based directory and identity management service.

For IT Admins, Azure AD provides an affordable, easy to use solution to give employees and business partners single sign-on (SSO) access to thousands of cloud SaaS Applications like Office365, Salesforce.com, DropBox, etc.

For application developers, Azure AD lets you focus on building your application by making it fast and simple to integrate with a world class identity management solution used by millions of organizations around the world.

Azure AD also includes a full suite of identity management capabilities including multi-factor authentication, device registration, self-service password management, self-service group management, privileged account management, role based access control, application usage monitoring, rich auditing and security monitoring and alerting. These capabilities can help secure cloud based applications, streamline IT processes, cut costs and help assure corporate compliance goals are met.

If you are an Office365, Azure or Dynamics CRM Online customer, you might not realize that you are already using Azure AD. Every Office365, Azure and Dynamics CRM tenant is actually already an Azure AD tenant. Whenever you want you can start using that tenant to manage access to thousands of other cloud applications Azure AD integrates with!