Windows Azure Active Directory Has Processed Over 430 Billion User Authentications

Windows Azure AD is the Microsoft’s Active Directory in the cloud. It offers enterprise class identity services in the cloud with support for multi-factor authentication and more. Microsoft yesterday announced no.of new features and stats about Azure AD yesterday.

As of yesterday, we have processed over 430 Billion user authentications in Azure AD, up 43% from June. And last week was the first time that we processed more than 10 Billion authentications in a seven day period. This is a real testament to the level of scale we can handle! You might also be interested to learn that more than 1.4 million business, schools, government agencies and non-profits are now using Azure AD in conjunction with their Microsoft cloud service subscriptions, an increase of 100% since July.

And maybe even more amazing is that we now have over 240 million user accounts in Azure AD from companies and organizations in 127 countries around the world. It is a good thing we’re up to 14 different data centers – it looks like we’re going to need it.

Also they announced these free enhancements for Windows Azure AD:

1. SSO to every SaaS app we integrate with – Users can Single Sign On to any app we are integrated with at no charge. This includes all the top SAAS Apps and every app in our application gallery whether they use federation or password vaulting. Unlike some of our competitors, we aren’t going to charge you per user or per app fees for SSO. And with 227 apps in the gallery and growing, you’ll have a wide variety of applications to choose from.
2. Application access assignment and removal – IT Admins can assign access privileges to web applications to the users in their directory assuring that every employee has access to the SAAS Apps they need. And when a user leaves the company or changes jobs, the admin can just as easily remove their access privileges assuring data security and minimizing IP loss
3. User provisioning (and de-provisioning) –IT admins will be able to automatically provision users in 3^rd party SaaS applications like Box, Salesforce.com, GoToMeeting. DropBox and others. We are working with key partners in the ecosystem to establish these connections, meaning you no longer have to continually update user records in multiple systems.
4. Security and auditing reports – Security is always a priority for us. With the free version of these enhancements you’ll get access to our standard set of access reports giving you visibility into which users are using which applications, when they were using and where they are using them from. In addition, we’ll alert you to un-usual usage patterns for instance when a user logs in from multiple locations at the same time. We are doing this because we know security is top of mind for you as well.
5. Our Application Access Panel – Users are logging in from every type of devices including Windows, iOS, & Android. Not all of these devices handle authentication in the same manner but the user doesn’t care. They need to access their apps from the devices they love. Our Application Access Panel is a single location where each user can easily access and launch their apps.

Source: Active Directory Team Blog