OpenID logoPlease check out this important post today on the Active Directory Team Blog: “For Developers: Important upcoming changes to the v2.0 Auth Protocol“. While the title may not be catchy, it’s content is compelling — particularly for developers.

The post describes the converged identity service being developed by Microsoft that will enable people to log in either with an individual account (Microsoft Account) or an organizational account (Azure Active Directory). This is a big deal, because developers will soon have a single identity service that their applications can use for both kinds of accounts.

The other big deal is that the changes announced are a concrete demonstration of Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to interoperability and support for open identity standards — in this case, OpenID Connect. As the post says:

The primary motivation for introducing these changes is to be compliant with the OpenID Connect standard specification. By being OpenID Connect compliant, we hope to minimize differences between integrating with Microsoft identity services and with other identity services in the industry. We want to make it easy for developers to use their favorite open source authentication libraries without having to alter the libraries to accommodate Microsoft differences.

If you’re a developer, please do heed the request in the post to give the service a try now as it approaches General Availability (GA). Enjoy!