Microsoft merges Microsoft Account and Azure AD Cloud identity services

Microsoft has taken a first step toward its long-term efforts of merging its Microsoft Account and Azure Active Directory cloud identity services. The company has made available a public preview of its converged programming model between the two.

Microsoft’s Active Directory Team runs both the Microsoft Account cloud service for consumers and the Azure Active Directory cloud service for organisations.

“Between these two systems, we manage hundreds of millions of active online users and perform billions of authentications a day. But previously, to take advantage of these identities, application developers have had to integrate differently with each system,” said Alex Simons, Director of Program Management for Microsoft Identity and Security Services, in a blog post. “If you are a developer, this will make it WAY easier for you to write applications that work with both Microsoft Account and Azure AD Accounts.”

With the v2 app model preview, it is possible for developers to sign-in both personal and work users with a single button. The model supports OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect 1.0 and normalises requests and responses across Microsoft account and Azure AD.

Not every application that currently interfaces with Azure AD or with Microsoft account is supported in this preview.

With this, Microsoft’s plan is to make programming to Microsoft services simple by having a single authentication model and a unified REST API. The second is to transition Microsoft’s own applications to this improved sign-in experience.

“While we experiment with the v2 app model, the protocols, SDKs, and tools of the current app model remain fully supported.”