Embodiments are directed to authenticating a user to a remote application provisioning service. In one scenario, a client computer system receives authentication credentials from a user at to authenticate the user to a remote application provisioning service that provides virtual machine-hosted remote applications. The client computer system sends the received authentication credentials to an authentication service, which is configured to generate an encrypted token based on the received authentication credentials. The client computer system then receives the generated encrypted token from the authentication service, stores the received encrypted token and the received authentication credentials in a data store, and sends the encrypted token to the remote application provisioning service. The encrypted token indicates to the remote application provisioning service that the user is a valid user.