Microsoft officially releases Azure Active Directory B2C in North America

Microsoft has announced today the general availability of Azure Active Directory B2C in North America. If you’re not familiar with it, Azure AD B2C is built on Azure Active Directory, Microsoft’s secure cloud identity platform that handles billions of authentications per day. Azure AD B2C aims to provide companies with an identity management service for consumer apps that can be easily integrated into mobile and web platforms. Swaroop Krishnamurthy, Senior Program Manager, Azure Active Directory added:

It is a game changer for organizations of all sizes that want to offer consumers secure access to their apps, by allowing consumers to reuse their existing social accounts or creating new app-local ones. It lets you focus on your app’s core functions and on growing its consumer base, by handling all of the app’s identity management needs, and not just sign-in.

Since its preview announcement, Microsoft says that the service has seen “explosive growth in usage and interest,” with high-profile customers such as Real Madrid and the State of Indiana already using it. Azure AD B2C will remain free of charge until early 2017, and the Azure team plans to make it generally available in Europe Asia Pacific in the coming months.

New features are also in the pipeline such as support for access tokens and multiple languages. You can already check the team’s roadmap and vote for the features you would like to be developed on the Azure UserVoice website.