Azure AD the leader in KuppingerCole leadership compass + first case studies

First published on CloudBlogs on Nov, 04 2014
Howdy folks, Catching up on some news your may have not been aware of with today's post. Azure AD the leader in KuppingerCole leadership compass report First, I'm excited to let you know that we were recently cited as the leader in the Cloud User and Access Management market by European analyst firm KuppingerCole. KuppingerCole is probably the most influential and forward looking European firm in the identity space, so we're really quite complimented that they've placed us in the leader's positon across Product Leadership, Innovation Leadership, and Market Leadership.

Quoting from the report:

"Looking at the Market Leadership chart, we see Microsoft being the clear leader. This is based on the fact that their Azure Active Directory on one hand shows good direct acceptance and on the other builds the foundation for widely used Microsoft Office 365. Furthermore, Microsoft has an exceptionally strong partner ecosystem."

Fig 1: Illustration from KuppingerCole report illustrating Microsoft's leadership position.

We've licensed rights to distribute the report which you can download here: KuppingerCole Leadership Compass Cloud User and Access Management

It's very cool to be recognized for the hard work we're are doing to create the best in class cloud identity service for our customers. That said, I feel like we've just scratched the surface still – there's a world of opportunity for innovation ahead of us still.  Our pipeline for the next 6 months is chocked full of cool new capabilities that I can't wait to get out to our customers and partners.

New Case Studies Azure AD Premium has been available for purchase for just over 5 months today. We have had a great time working closely with our first set of customers to get them live and successfully using AAD Premium. Based on that effort, we now have our first set of case studies that highlight how two of our customers, FHI360 and the Walsh Group are using Azure AD Premium and the benefits they are seeing:

FHI360: https://customers.microsoft.com/Pages/CustomerStory.aspx?recid=10894

The Walsh Group: https://customers.microsoft.com/Pages/CustomerStory.aspx?recid=10780

I want to send a huge shout out to FHI360 and The Walsh Group – we've learned a ton working with them and REALLY appreciate their close partnership. As always, if you have any feedback or suggestions, we'd love to hear from you! Best regards, Alex Simons (twitter: @Alex_A_Simons ) Director of Program Management Microsoft Identity and Security Services Division