Difference Between Azure AD B2B & B2C

The introduction of cloud platforms to the digital domain has brought tons of benefits to businesses across different industries. Businesses are not only saving their operational costs but also adding to the efficiency of their IT infrastructure. Microsoft Azure is one of the most popular and sought-after cloud platforms which is providing an array of benefits and features to businesses.
Azure AD B2B & B2C are two famous products, each one with its own set of benefits. The name simply signifies that Azure AD B2B is meant for business partners whereas Azure AD B2C is meant for customers or end-users. But there is a lot more to it other than simply defining it with respect to the type of user. Choosing the right technology demands the right knowledge of both and a proper layout of your business requirements.

Azure AD B2B

As the name indicates, Azure AD B2B allows businesses to share their applications or services with their partners or suppliers by providing them access to your resources. The entire data access is kept by the company itself.
For collaboration, the partner users have to provide their identities and credentials. It is not necessary that the partner users asking for access must have an Azure AD account. There is also no need to manage any external accounts or passwords for the provision of access.
There is a wide range of options which are available for collaborations with other organizations and clouds. All the inbound and outbound B2B collaborations can be managed using cross-tenant access settings of Azure AD B2B.

Azure AD B2C

Azure AD B2C is all about the provision of business-to-customer identity as a service. With Azure AD B2C, you can share your applications or APIs with your customers through a simple sign-on access mechanism. Azure AD B2C also has the features to detect and mitigate all types of security risks, including denial-of-service, intrusion, or brute-force attacks.
The custom policy feature of Azure AD B2C allows businesses to offer multi-step sign-in experiences to users.

Azure AD B2C vs Azure AD B2B: Which One is Better?

Your business goals define the right type of Azure AD product for your enterprise. If you are looking for cross-organization collaboration and your employees or students need access to your shared resources, then Azure AD B2B is the right choice. But if you are planning to build an identity repository for their customer-facing applications, then Azure AD B2C is the best.