Centrify offers single sign on to cloud services using Active Directory credentials

Management tools firm Centrify is readying a new offering that allows organisations to implement single sign-on (SSO) access to software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and other cloud computing services using their Active Directory credentials.

Centrify DirectControl for SaaS is available from Monday as a public beta, and is set for general availability sometime in the first quarter of 2013.

The tool builds on some of the technology used in Centrify's DirectControl for Mobile, launched earlier this year, which extends Active Directory control out to Apple iOS and Android mobile devices.

Along with Centrify's existing products for Mac OS X, Unix and Linux, the new release allows Active Directory credentials to be used for single sign-on to a broad swathe of corporate infrastructure.

This should eliminate the multiple logins that employees otherwise have to manage, while administrators can safely and easily rescind access to everything if an employee leaves the company.

"We're now able to facilitate the ability for users to truly have a single username and password across the cloud, mobile and datacentre," Centrify chief executive Tom Kemp told V3.

This is important, as companies of all sizes are increasingly making use of cloud and SaaS applications alongside traditional on-premise applications, he added.

As with the mobile product, DirectControl for SaaS makes use of a Centrify cloud service, enabling users to log into SaaS applications while out on the road as well as when sitting behind their corporate firewall.

Users access their SaaS applications via a browser-based interface, the MyCentrify portal (pictured above), which uses a Security Assertion Markup Language (Saml) token generated from the Kerboros ticket held by their PC to silently sign them in when they access an application.