Azure AD Helps Businesses Authenticate Consumers

A new Azure Active Directory (AAD) service called AAD Business to Consumer (B2C) offers businesses identity management as a service that can be used in products and services that organizations offer to their end-user customers. The service will require some integration and customization to be effective. Businesses with large numbers of end-user customers will need to pay for the service.

Service Overview

The AAD B2C service offers identity management and integration of most major consumer identity providers into an organization’s services while minimizing the changes required to application code. An organization might elect to use AAD B2C rather than building and maintaining its own identity management framework.

End-user customers can associate their Amazon, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Microsoft account identities with the organization’s applications or create a new organization-specific identity. Multifactor authentication (MFA) is available at an additional charge. The service is free, but it is limited to 50,000 consumers in the tenancy. Four additional tiers are available, with the costs depending on the number of stored identities. The services replace Azure Access Control Services (ACS), which delivered a set of similar functionality. AAD B2C provides user interfaces for authentication, whereas ACS does not.