June 13, 2013 News Thursday: Multi-Factor Authentication Comes to Windows Azure and More Server and Tools News…
by STB Blogger
Multi-Factor Authentication Comes to Windows Azure
Microsoft has announced the preview of a new service, code named Active Authentication, that enables multi-factor authentication for Windows Azure Active Directory identities. The new service will help secure access to Office 365, Windows Azure, Windows Intune, and Dynamics CRM Online, as well as many apps that are integrated with Windows Azure AD. Developers can also use the Active Authentication SDK to build multi-factor authentication into their custom applications and directories. Active Authentication offers strong security, yet is easy to set up, manage and use, and scales to support high-volume, mission critical applications and large-scale employee, partner, and customer deployments.
For more information on this service, see the Windows Azure Blog, and for technical information on how to get started, visit Windows Azure Active Directory Blog.
Windows Azure Customer Webcast on June 18: TalkTalk Business
Join us on Tuesday, June 18 at 9:00 AM PDT to hear from TalkTalk Business about their mobile solution that runs on Windows Azure. TalkTalk Business is a leading telecommunications provider that offers a suite of broadband, telephone, mobile phone, and IT support services to businesses across the UK. Windows Azure helps TalkTalk Business serve customer demand for mobile access to service information while maintaining secure business requirements for sensitive data.
With a scalable backend provided by Windows Azure Mobile Services and on-premises-to-cloud messaging through Service Bus Relay, TalkTalk Business is able to provide a consistent experience across devices and platforms while preserving data security.
Register now to hear from TalkTalk Business about this solution, their best practices and key learnings.
Clustered ONTAP 8.2 with Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2: Innovation in Storage and the Cloud
Great strategic relationships are built on an alignment of vision. “When it comes to giving customers the benefits of the cloud—and its potential for simpler, more cost-effective storage—Microsoft and NetApp are aligned in a vision of providing automation, flexibility, and control to support datacenter scalability and manageability,” said Chris Phillips, Partner Director PM, Windows Server. “One key area of collaboration has been around Microsoft’s Cloud OS vision and NetApp’s clustered Data ONTAP 8.2, with built-in support for SMB 3.0 and ODX.”
The Cloud OS is Microsoft’s comprehensive vision for a consistent approach to infrastructure on premises and in the private and public cloud. Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 are at the heart of the Cloud OS, which is advancing rapidly, as evidenced by last week’s announcement of the upcoming R2 releases of these products. The 2012 wave of products brought significant advances in virtualization, such as Hyper-V Network Virtualization, and in storage with such capabilities as Windows Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX) and SMB 3.0.
As Microsoft’s innovation accelerates, the company recognizes the importance of strategic alliances with industry innovators such as NetApp with its Data ONTAP. Windows Server Hyper-V, SMB 3.0 and ODX are important components to the workloads for clustered Data ONTAP 8.2.
Read NetApp’s blog for more information on the ways that NetApp and Microsoft are enabling customers to increase IT agility and to easily migrate VMs across the datacenter and across cloud sites.