Publishing Internal Web Applications without the Red Tape
As technology changes, so too does the expectation of IT professionals to make the impossible, or at least improbable, possible. In the upcoming edition of TechNet Flash Australia Newsletter, the brilliant Alan Schmarr from Dilignet takes us through a tough task: how to deploy highly available and accessible internal applications from anywhere and on any device. His proposition? Use Azure Active Directory Application Proxy. This is how it works:
The majority of on-premise web applications are created without the intent of being accessed externally and so require application or infrastructure changes, aka. a lot of Red Tape to navigate, to enable the application to be externally accessible.
Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AD) Application Proxy extends Azure AD SaaS (Software as a Service) web management capabilities to on-premise web applications. It provides the ability to manage access to internal web based applications using Azure AD by authenticating users through the application proxy hosted in Azure.
To allow an internal web application to be accessed externally, the only requirement is the installation of Azure Active Directory (AD) Application Proxy. To work, the application proxy requires access to the internal web application and Microsoft Azure services. Fortunately, this is just a once off configuration that, when complete, enables the business to add or remove any internal web application they require with little or no red tape.
Azure Active Directory (AD) Application Proxy is still in Preview at the moment, due for public release soon. Here are some of the planned features to get excited about:
- Pre-authentication services for users
- Workplace join for non-domain-joined machines
- Multi-factor authentication
- Access the application using Microsoft application dashboard
For additional information, visit Alan's blog post on the subject, or have a look at this MSDN article. Each issue of the fortnightly TechNet Flash Australia newsletter features an editorial that solves some form of IT Pro problem, so sign up if you find articles similar to this useful!
Feel free to comment below if there's anything in particular you'd like to see as a How-To editorial (or other).
Best of luck,