Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Lin Huang

Yordan Ivanov Rouskov

Rui Chen

Lynn Ayres

David W Bailey

Wei-Quiang Michael Guo

Venkatesh Veeraraghavan

Nathan Fink

Wei-qiang Guo

Targo Tennisberg

Geoffrey John Hulten

Vikas Rajvanshy

Rangaprasad Narasimhan

John F Wohlfert

Vaishali De

Rodrigo Junqueira Lode

Samir Vasantbhai Shah

Ravi Kiran R Poluri

WeiQiang Michael Guo

Ajay Wadhawan

Jacek T Dudziak

Santosh Daddi

Embodiments of authenticating linked accounts are presented herein. In an implementation, an authentication service provides functionality to form links between a plurality of user accounts. A client may then authenticate by providing credentials for one account in a group of linked accounts, and is permitted access to each account in the group of linked accounts based upon the linking. Thus, a single sign-in of a client to one account may permit the client to obtain services for service providers corresponding to multiple linked accounts, without an individual sign-in to each account.

Authenticating linked accounts

A request to resolve an IP address is received by a Domain Name Server (DNS). A record, such as an MX record, relating to the request is obtained that comprises a unique label (e.g. record=customer-com.mail.messaging.com) that is used in determining how to resolve the request. The unique label portion of the record (e.g. customer-com) is used to identify information relating to the request such as a version of software/service to use to handle the request, a region used to handle the request, and the like. The same record may be used to direct a request to a different version and/or different region. For example, without changing the record, a request at one time may access a first version/region and a request at a different time access a different version/region.

Dynamic and intelligent DNS routing with subzones

Techniques and systems are disclosed that can measure capacity of a server farm, and project capacity needs based on traffic and resources. Server farm system information is collected for managing the server farm by identifying a list of servers in the server farm. Performance metrics are collected from identified servers and stored in a collection database. The stored performance metrics are analyzed in accordance with a server farm management request.

Server farm management

The present invention provides a system and method for targeting content to audiences. The audience is defined by rules that may be based on properties as well as organizational structure associated with the users. Each of the rules is compiled to determine the group of members belonging to the rule. Logical operators are then applied to the groups to determine the audience membership. Compiling the rules enhances performance as the rules do not have to be run each time. Instead, a simple check against the rules results is performed. The rules making up the audience may be compiled at predetermined times in order to keep the audience up-to-date. Audiences are then selected and tagged to content so that the content may be viewed by the selected audiences.

Content targeting with audiences

A centralized account reputation system differentiates between illegitimate users and legitimate users using reputation scores associated with the users' online accounts. The system restricts the access of illegitimate users to certain network services while minimizing its negative effects on legitimate users. The system can manage the life cycle of an online account, considering data about the account that is obtained throughout the account network to compute the online account reputation score and allocating access to network services based on the online account reputation score. For example, a reputation score may be embedded in a security token that can be accessed by multiple services on the account network, so that each service can determine the appropriate level of access to be granted to the associated user account based on the reputation score. Various types of online account behavior over time can improve or diminish the online account's reputation.

Centralized account reputation

A datacenter infrastructure comprising a plurality of datacenters is configured to provide services to users. Data (e.g., application data) provided to respective datacenters from a user is synchronized between different datacenters comprised within 'a cloud' according to a multilevel synchronization scheme. Respective levels of the multilevel synchronization operate to transfer different priority (user) data between the plurality of datacenters, wherein respective priorities are determined based upon the importance of the data in providing a service. For example, data used to perform a service is synchronized by a synchronization component facilitating a higher level of synchronization between datacenters, while data not routinely used to perform a service is synchronized by a lower priority synchronization component. Synchronization between datacenters allows a network address routing system to provide substantially uninterrupted routing of a user to an available or otherwise appropriate datacenter within the datacenter infrastructure, thereby providing increased service reliability and performance.

Datacenter synchronization

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Lin Huang