Microsoft has, ever so quietly, released the first ever public preview of the Windows Azure Rights Management (RMS) development kits. These work with Active Directory on Azure and can be used to control access to specific documents.
Software development kits for a number of platforms — including desktop, Modern and phone — along with iOS and Android are now available.
The technology titan detailed this in a recent blog post. Dan Plastina of Microsoft explained pretty much all there is to know in elaborate detail, saying:
“RMS enables organizations to share sensitive documents within their organization or to other organizations with unprecedented ease. These documents can be of any type, and you can consume them on any device. Given the protection scheme is very robust, the file can even be openly shared… even on consumer services like SkyDrive™/DropBox™/GDrive™.”
As can be seen, this is a vastly improved and updated rights management service, and takes into account many popular platforms and services.
In fact, Microsoft seems to be in a very generous mood here. Not every business or company has access to RMS, and the technology titan has announced that it will be offering RMS for free to individuals within such organizations.
Five SDKs are currently available that target Windows for PCs, Windows Store Apps, Windows Phone 8, iOS and Android, with a Mac OS X SDK said to be in preview for, with expected availability in October.
