Centrify for SaaS now supports Office 365

With Centrify, organisations can simplify and speed Office 365 migrations and initial deployments within a matter of an hour for employees, reduce helpdesk burden, improve access controls, and leverage their existing Active Directory infrastructure and skillsets. Centrify is also announcing that Microsoft has evaluated Centrify for Office 365 across key user scenarios and has qualified it as a “Works with Office 365” solution.

Centrify for Office 365, an Azure-based service, delivers full support for Office 365, simplifying the deployment of federated identity, providing a rich catalog of pre-integrated SaaS apps, and delivering “Zero Sign-On” (ZSO) for rich mobile clients that require access to Office 365. Centrify for Office 365 delivers seamless integration with Active Directory in minutes — without the hassle of managing server clusters in the DMZ, creating security issues by poking more holes in the firewall, replicating identity information to the cloud, or acquiring and maintaining public certificates. The solution will be unveiled and demoed publicly for the first time this week at TechEd 2013 in Centrify’s booth No. 2418.

“Office 365 is on track to be one of the fastest growing businesses in Microsoft’s history,” said Arpan Shah, Senior Director of Product Management for Office 365, Microsoft. “We look forward to working with partners like Centrify who enable a frictionless experience for customers looking to leverage their Microsoft Active Directory for seamless federation to Office 365.”

Every SaaS application represents yet another silo of identity and access control challenges for organisations. By controlling access to SaaS applications such as Office 365 through Centrify for SaaS and centrally authenticating users with their Active Directory identity, IT gains valuable insight into which applications are in use, and can easily de-provision access to business critical SaaS applications when users leave the organisation. With easy and thorough reporting on who has access to Office 365 and other SaaS applications, and what they did with that access privilege, IT can more quickly prove compliance with regulations and industry best practices — freeing up expensive IT resources to deliver on other business critical projects.

“Centrify’s unique approach to SaaS security and single sign-on enables Active Directory to centrally manage policies for accessing and authenticating to SaaS applications, including Office 365,” said Corey Williams, Centrify senior director of product management. “Not only does Centrify improve usability of SaaS applications such as Office 365 with single sign-on and self-service features, but it also improves security by reducing passwords, securing identity, and authenticating access through Active Directory for more control and visibility into the SaaS applications users are accessing.”

With Centrify, users easily reset their Active Directory password, unlock their account, and manage their personal data inside Active Directory themselves. If the Centrify for Mobile solution is installed on their mobile devices, users can also enable self-service features such as locating, locking or wiping their lost device. The end result is user self-empowerment, the elimination of redundant solutions, and reduced helpdesk burden for day-to-to-day administration.

Centrify is a longtime valued partner of Microsoft as a result of bridging Active Directory to millions of existing UNIX, Linux and Mac systems and applications. The integration with Office 365 continues to align Centrify strategically with Microsoft as Centrify expands to integrate and manage mobile devices and cloud applications. Centrify for Office 365 is built on Windows Azure, and unlike competitive solutions does not merely synchronise with Active Directory for user information but rather natively integrates and retains the customer’s Windows Server Active Directory or Windows Azure Active Directory infrastructure as the identity provider. It enables IT to cost-effectively deliver SaaS single sign-on and security by leveraging existing technology, skillsets and processes associated with Active Directory environments.

The Centrify Cloud Service is a multi-tenanted cloud service that provides secure communication from on-premise Active Directory to SaaS applications accessed. The Centrify Cloud Service facilitates secure single sign-on and controls access to SaaS applications by acting as a security token service, which can authenticate users to the user portal with Kerberos, SAML or an Active Directory username/password; then logs the user into their SaaS application through a one-click selection from a list of permitted SaaS applications. Additionally, the Centrify Cloud Service enables user self-service for mobile device and Active Directory profiles while auditing all management and user activities.