Azure AD vs Azure AD B2C vs Azure AD B2B

Question

Before Azure AD B2C and Azure AD B2B come into the picture, usualy I added my applications to Azure AD of our tenancy and office 365 users could access the applications using their account (SSO).

I am not a guru so I need to see code and read about exact examples to understand the concepts.

Can I use B2C for SSO as I usually used Azure AD? otherwise how/when can I use B2C and B2B?

Thanks and appreciate all kind of advice.

Answer 1

Azure AD is a directory service with the goal of serving organisations and their needs for identity management in the cloud. You develop against Azure AD, you can secure your applications with it - their users in Azure AD tenants can use it.

Your application is targeted for a specific organisation or multiple organisations using Azure AD (Office 365).

Azure AD B2B is just a feature of Azure AD. It allows organisations to grant access to their applications and services for users from other tenants. From your app perspective nothing changes. It is still same Azure AD app. Azure AD B2B has an API which can be used to create flows for the invitation of users from another directory but it is not changing your app design, etc.

Azure AD B2C is another service built on the same technology but not the same in functionality as Azure AD. Azure AD B2C target is to build a directory for consumer applications where users can register with e-mail ID or social providers like Google, FB, MSA, known as Federation Gateway. The goal for Azure AD B2C is to allow organizations to manage single directory of customer identities shared among all applications i.e. single sign-on.

Azure AD B2C is not targeted at organisation users but consumers.

Simple: Azure AD - apps for organisations and their corporate users Azure AD B2C - apps for customers, like mobile apps, shopping portals etc.

For quick reference I've gathered this in blog post: http://predica.pl/blog/azure-ad-b2b-b2c-puzzled-out/