Microsoft Entra ID Reviews

I am a systems manager. I use Azure Active Directory every day for my support job.

Our authentication tools to single sign-on portals are hosted in different cloud products, like Amazon or GCP. So, we create an enterprise application and Azure Active Directory to give our users for authentication access to various public URLs.

Before Azure Active Directory, it took effort to provide cloud access to on-premises users. With Azure Active Directory and AD Connect, we are able to sync on-prem users to the cloud with minimal effort. We don't have to manage keeping multiple entities for the same user.

The multi-factor authentication (MFA) is one of the best aspects of the product. 

The security features are great. They will report in advance to you in the case of suspicious activity. 

The GUI is pretty enhanced. You can configure applications or do whatever they need to do. 

Azure Active Directory currently supports Linux machines. However, the problem is that you get either full or minimal access. It would be very nice if we could have some granular authorization modules in Azure Active Directory, then we could join it to the Linux machine and get elevated access as required. Right now, it is either full or nothing. I would like that to be improved. 

We have the ability to join Windows VMs to Azure. It would be nice if we could have some user logs, statistics, and monitoring with Azure Active Directory.

When we subscribe to MFA, the users get MFA tokens. However, it is not a straightforward process to embed any of the OTP providers. It would be good if Microsoft started embedding other third-party OTP solutions. That would be a huge enhancement.

I have been using Active Directory for two years.

This product is used every second of every day.

The solution offers nice stability and performance. 

In my organization, there might be as many as 60,000 people who utilize the solution. 

The scalability is awesome. You don't even need to think about scalability because Microsoft manages it.

We use it on a daily basis.

The support could be better. Lately, they sort of dropped off a bit in terms of quality. Recently, Microsoft support has not been doing such a good job. Previously, they used to do a good job.

In the past, AD Connect was not syncing. It threw errors in the beginning. So, I had to call up technical support to solve the problem. At the time, we were satisfied with their assistance.

I am also using AWS.

Azure Active Directory is not an Active Directory product. It is just the application proxy. You need to have an on-prem solution. Azure Active Directory would just be a proxy that uses the on-prem data and hosts the application. It is not a full-scale Active Directory solution. However, it has a lot of enhancements. The traditional on-prem Active Directory hosts the users and computers as well as some additional group objects. 

On the other hand, AWS Active Directory has all the capabilities of the traditional Active Directory with limited access for the administrator. All domain administration and sensitive credentials will be managed by AWS. So, you don't need to worry about application delays or syncing issues.  

The initial setup is simple.

It is pretty easy to set up the product. You subscribe in Azure Active Directory. By default, it will have an extension where you need to register. If you need a custom domain name, then you need to register with your public DNS providers to create the DNS public entry. You will then have to prove that you own the domain name. Once it has been proven, then your Active Directory pretty much works. 

If you need to sync up your on-prem users with the Azure Active Directory, then you need to have an AD Connect server installed at the VM-level domain. It should be credentialed so AD Connect can use credentials to read your on-premises and sync it to the cloud. Once this has been done, you are good to go. As an enhancement, for whatever user you are syncing, you can mandate them by adding them to a group or rolling out an MFA policy.

Since it is pretty straightforward, you just need one person to deploy it.

I implemented it in an hour.

Some maintenance is required. However, it is not on Azure Active Directory's part. Rather, it is for AD Connect. Often, we see that the connection is getting lost or something is not happening. Sometimes, port 443 might not be open from your on-prem Azure Active Directory. In that case, if you haven't implemented it in the beginning, then you need to do this. For a high availability solution, if you find that the machine is having additional issues, then you might need a higher AD Connect device. I would probably also deploy it with a different availability.

The solution has three types of tiers:

1. E1 has very basic features. 
2. You get limited stuff in E2 and cannot have Office 360 associated with it. 
3. E3 is on the costly side and has all the features.
   

If you need to have an Exchange subscription or email functionality, then you need to pay more for that.

We are using both the on-premises version and the SaaS version.

I would advise potential new users to learn a bit about the product before jumping in. If you are new, you need to do background research about Azure Active Directory. You also need to understand its purpose and how you want to leverage it. When you have a draft architecture in place, then you can go ahead and implement this solution. If it needs to be reimplemented, it is just a matter of five minutes.

I would rate the solution as nine out of 10.

We work with Active Directory in our own IT network in our office. We also deploy Active Directory projects in some other clients.

Active Directory is an active directory service from Windows for a Windows Server operating system.

We have synchronized identities on-premise with on-cloud identities in order to work with Microsoft-aligned services such as Office 365 and to work in the middle of hybrid topology for on-prem and cloud identities, as well as to be more productive with other capabilities that Azure Active Directory Premium offers. This includes, for example, single sign-on, multifactor authentication, Conditional Access, privileged access management, and Privileged Identity Management. Our current experience with Azure in the Cloud - Azure Active Directory - is it's very functional and productive in talking about identity and access management solutions.

In the last two years, as COVID has been present worldwide, the Azure Active Directory capabilities have allowed us to work completely in a remote way. It's not fully necessary to work at the office or in only certain locations. We are now fully capable to work from any location, any place in the world.

The most important thing about this solution is the capabilities for multifactor authentication and single sign-on that it offers for native Microsoft solutions and non-native Microsoft solutions.

The solution has features that have helped improve our security posture. Azure Active Directory works with some technologies around security such as mobile device management, mobile application management, and Azure Information Protection as well as Conditional Access and multifactor authentication. These capabilities give us a good level of security.

The solution has affected our end-user experience. For example, we work with several technologies in the Cloud, such as Salesforce. Azure Active Directory allows us to work within a single sign-on model. This allows us to work more easily, and not have to remember a bunch of different passwords for various applications. With a single sign-on, we can work in a more transparent way and we can be more productive, having direct access to our applications in the cloud.

Microsoft is working with Microsoft Identity Manager for Active Directory on-premise. It will be very important to have these identity management solutions directly in Azure Active Directory. It's very important to have some kind of Azure identity manager as a technology for identity and access management for working both in the cloud and inside the Azure suite.

I've been using the solution for the last 15 years or so. 

We have the service running all the time and it runs and works without an issue. Up until now, we have not had any problems at all in terms of the availability of the service.

We know that if we need to integrate more than hundreds or thousands of users, we know this won't be a problem. We have about 80 users in the Azure Active Directory right now, however, we know that if it was necessary to scale it for hundreds or thousands of users, it wouldn't be a problem.

We've contacted technical support several times over the last ten or so years. 

Microsoft is a very big, important company. People working in technical support have been very professional and quick to respond. They're very good specialists.

This is the first product that I consider as it is a powerful directory service and better than what any other company offers.

The initial setup was very straightforward. We've worked with Azure Active Directory for the last three or four years and find it very easy to deploy. It might take maybe three days. 

In terms of maintenance, we only have a couple of people dedicated to offering technical support. Once you deploy it, it's not necessary to give too much support after that.

I know that there are several other solutions, for example, Open LDAP, et cetera. I like the functionalities that Microsoft Active Directory offers. Therefore, it was not necessary to test any other technology.

I'm pretty sure that one of the main advantages of Microsoft Active Directory is that not only does it provide user management, it's also a technology component inside of a very big strategy for technology in any environment or company. It's native. Users can have their own mailbox for Exchange or Office 365. Active Directory is integrated as a way of authentication for any other database or web service. The main advantage is that it's integrated into a whole global authentication strategy.

I am a Microsoft-certified systems engineer. I've been doing this for the last 22 years.

I'm a partner and reseller. We work with several specialists for deploying, project management, and development of solutions around Microsoft technologies.

For any customer or any client that is interested in deploying Azure Active Directory to have a full strategy for hybrid environments. They need to take into account users on-premise and users and resources in the cloud in order to have an integrated architecture and solution to best utilize the Azure Active Directory capabilities.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

Azure AD is primarily integrated with all of the Microsoft services, such as Microsoft 365, Office 365, and Dynamics 365/Power Apps. Behind the scenes, we are, in one way or another, using Azure AD for our application security, identity management, and to access purpose services. At times, we need to configure some advanced features to provide access and identity to third-party apps to integrate with Dynamic 365. 

Unfortunately, I don't have any numbers and metrics related to organizational improvement off-hand.

That said, using Azure AD app services, we don't have to care about secure access to our Dynamics 365 data. Azure AD performs the authentication on behalf of our application and that's great. We don't have to implement security on our side to secure access for third-party services or third-party software or applications.

Azure B2C has also helped us in providing secure access to the Power Apps portal, or external content.

The app registration services are great. This basically simplifies security in order to give access to third-party apps from within Microsoft services such as Dynamics 365 and Power Apps. We can do this in a very secure manner using the AD. This really very simplifies the identity and access management for us.  

I use Azure B2C for providing access to external users. It was a really great experience to configure Azure AD B2C. I like this feature, as it provides a single sign-on for existing or new users; even new Azure AD users can be provided with sign-ins to our portal.

The solution has features that have helped improve our security posture. For example, without Azure B2C or any third-party identity service like Google or Gmail, we are compelled to store users' credentials and sensitive data in Dynamics 365 contact table somewhere. By using Azure B2C, we are totally independent of this.

The solution hasn’t affected the end-user experience. Usually, users are not so IT aware, so they don't feel an impact related to the change. We know that having secure access for them is important for them and also for us, however, they don’t feel any noticeable difference with the extra security in place.

Honestly speaking, I haven't thought about where areas of improvement might be necessary.

Everything was very smooth every time we used Azure AD. In other Microsoft solutions, we come across some bugs or workarounds, et cetera. However, as far as Azure AD is concerned, or maybe, to the extent that we are using it at least, we haven't come across any issues.

In terms of identity and access management and concerns, all of our needs are provided by the existing implemented features.

I have been using the advanced feature of Azure AD for the last three years or so.

Currently, Azure AD and most of the Azure services are very, very stable. A couple of years ago, I experienced some difficulty in implementing the solutions, the services of Azure AD. In one instance, I was not able to configure Azure AD for a registration. This was two or three years ago. However, currently, the documentation is very clear and there are no loopholes or anything that could hinder even a simple IT administrator to implement these services.

I am just using the product for integration with Dynamics 365 and Power Apps solutions. Right now, we are integrating with Azure AD in a very simple manner. I'm not sure if we plan to expand usage.

In our company, 100 to 200 people are connecting to PowerApps portals using Azure AD B2C.

There are two or three developers right now who use Azure AD for identity and access management purposes. Managers will not be using Azure AD in that it is not used to configure and trigger solutions using Azure.

We haven't used customer support contact up to this point. Everything that we need is already provided through the documentation. So far, we haven't had any need to contact customer support for Azure AD.

We did not use a different solution before we used Azure AD. We only use Microsoft solutions.

The initial setup was very straightforward. The documentation is very good and the steps are very well documented. I remember three years ago I encountered some undocumented feature or maybe a bug when configuring Azure AD for apps registration. However, lately, this is not the case. Currently, the documentation is very up-to-date and very clear, and almost every time I register the user, the apps in Azure AD, and configuration the Azure B2C have helpful documentation. They probably made some form of an update to the system that fixed any past bugs or issues.

The deployment hardly takes 15 to 30 minutes - and that's for app registration. To complete the whole process on the Azure AD side and on our Dynamics 365 side - including Azure B2C - it took, when I implemented it for the first time, one hour to set up everything. That was the first time. Since then, I've gotten faster and it now hardly takes 30 to 40 minutes to configure Azure B2C.

We are an IT company ourselves. A hundred percent of the time we use our own skills and documentation to implement everything related to Azure AD and Dynamics 365 or anything else.

We have seen an ROI due to the fact that it integrates with other Microsoft services very seamlessly. In that sense, it definitely saves time and cost as opposed to implementing something that we don't know, such as other identity systems. 

I don't know much about the pricing. As far as licensing is concerned, there are two options. There is a set of free services that are offered through a free license and if you have a Microsoft tenant or any Microsoft service such as Dynamics 365 or Power Apps, you have access to a free set of services that Azure AD provides. This includes registration and some other items. 

If you want to use Azure AD's advanced features, they are not provided for free. There are two types of premium licenses that are available for anyone who is a registered licensed user.

We did not evaluate different solutions before we chose Azure AD. This is due to the fact that, in the Microsoft ecosystem, Azure AD fits best in terms of providing access and identity management to all of the other Microsoft online services.

We are a Microsoft partner.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using. This is an online service. As I'm a Dynamics 365/Power Apps developer, usually I don't bother to check what version of Azure AD is currently hosting on the online services.

I would advise new users, if they are using Microsoft online services, that Azure AD is the best choice for all identity and access management requirements. This is due to the fact that it is in the same ecosystem. It understands the needs of its own vendors much better compared to any other external identity service.

I'd rate the solution a perfect ten out of ten.

My company provides different types of support for different products. I am a Microsoft Azure support engineer for Azure Active Directory.

We work with multifactor authentication, federation, synchronization of on-premise services to the cloud, migrations from on-premises to the cloud, and role-based access to company services. I also work with the identity services of Azure. I work with certain cases where customers have issues with Office 365. That's because the administration and the role-based access come from the Azure platform. 

We're in the middle of the transition to unify more services. There are many services in terms of networking with the machines and storage accounts.

Azure is a platform, so it doesn't have a version.

Microsoft 365 is a part of the service of Active Directory. Currently, all the people and institutions, such as schools and universities, working from home are getting the benefits of Microsoft 365 in Azure Active Directory. They are indirect users of Azure Active Directory. That's because all the services are with the Azure platform, and all these identities are managed from the cloud. This service is providing a huge contribution to the whole world at this time. For example, my nephew is not going to school currently, but he has to connect every day through Microsoft Teams. I know that it is Active Directory that's managing this authentication, but he doesn't know that.

Azure provides many services related to security, data protection, identity, key networking, and management of the storage accounts with encryption. The whole environment is very secure. Azure works with the security of the services. It is in the backend, and it is the same platform as Microsoft 365 or Office 365. So, if you have Office 365, you're using Azure. The platform source is the same for Azure and Office 365 or Microsoft 365. It is the same platform to manage the users. At a certain point, I guess everything will be together because even though there are too many services, all of them rely on the same platform.

There is a secure way of managing the security and access to your services. If you use Azure in your company, you can manage the type of authentication that you want to use for security. For example, you can manage your company from on-premises and also use the cloud in a hybrid environment. This way the services that Azure provides on the cloud are available for the users that exist on-premises, and this is actually where I'm working right now.

The most important things of Azure Active Directory are the security and the facility to manage all the services and users. It is very easy to manage users and assign roles, permissions, and access. At the same time, it is a very secure environment. Microsoft takes security very seriously. They take care of all the security and all the factors to prevent any kind of data or information compromise.

For data protection and access security, there are many good things that Azure and Azure Active Directory offer. You can choose in how many ways a user can log in to Azure, especially with multifactor authentication. You can choose how, when, and where someone can access a service that you may have on Azure Active Directory. 

For most of the small users, Azure Active Directory is free. So, they don't need to have a paid service for Azure Active Directory.

The platform is constantly changing. Every month, we have new services, and we also have services that are being deprecated to provide a better customer experience. For example, we have a tool that connects the users that exist on-premises to the cloud. The AD connects to this synchronization tool, which has been improved about five times in the last year. Every new version is more flexible with more options. The experience for the users has been improved to make it easier to manage the tool. In addition, the feedback that the customers provide to Microsoft is taken very seriously. For example, there were some authentication features that, for security purposes, had certain limitations. Those limitations still exist, but the portal now has options so that the customers can make custom features to manage their identity. There is a feature called manage identities where you can give flexible access to a person for services. For example, I can give you access as a reader to all my information but only for 12 hours or 24 hours. So, I can decide for how long I want to give you access. In the past, I had to give you a role that was permanent, and now, I can give you a role that will last only a few hours to allow you to do your job. In case you need more time or more features, you need to contact me and request them. 

Similarly, previously, there weren't too many options when you were synchronizing your users from on-premise to the cloud. Now, the system that allows you to make that synchronization has many options. You can select different schemas. You can select which users you want to be a part of the cloud. You can manage many rules. The customization in the whole Azure platform is awesome. All these features that are now a part of the platform were not there in the past. In these three years, I have seen so many changes. There are too many features, and I can see changes every month. There are too many settings that have been improved, especially related to authentication, permissions, and auto management ops. The cloud or the Azure platform is managed by roles that you can assign to different people, and each role has different permissions and access. So, everything is very customizable right now.

I have been working with Azure Active Directory for two years.

Scalability is one of the main features of Azure. You can adjust the services that you have., You can increase them anytime, and if you are not using them, you can downgrade the services to the minimum. The scalability and elasticity are the key features of Azure. They allow you to manage all the resources that you have according to your needs. For example, if you are a big company that is going to have a lot of customers during a period and needs to duplicate or triplicate resources, you can get all those created immediately. When you don't need that many virtual machines, storage accounts, or web services, you can downgrade to the minimum. The pricing will be according to the service that you are using. This is one of the most attractive things for the customers because if you were on-premises, what would you do with all those desktops once you don't need them. On the cloud, it is different. If you don't need it, just remove the service, and you won't be charged. It is very flexible.

I provide support for Azure AD. This is my area of support currently, but sometimes customers have questions about different products or services. Because I'm working on Azure Active Directory, it doesn't mean that I only know about this specific product. We are constantly learning and getting trained. There are too many things to learn more about the Azure platform. I have worked for the billing and subscriptions team, which is a totally different type of support. If a customer has questions about billing, subscriptions, pricing, and discounts available on the platform, I can provide support. If a customer needs help with creating a virtual machine, I can tell the customer to work with another team. If I have the knowledge, I go the extra mile and help them. 

There have been situations where the customers had a ten-year-old server that was no longer supported, and all the services were very old. They were from the time when Azure started, and those services are called classic services. Most of those services are not compatible with today's technologies. In such cases, we had to let the customers know that they need to migrate the services, which can get tough for some of them because not all users have the resources to move services to new technology. In such cases, we work with other teams within our own company and try to find a solution. We always try to find a solution. We are not limited to one solution. We'll research for options and do some brainstorming with other teams, and most of the time, there are no cases that we can't close or are unsolved. Of course, customers might have been expecting a different solution, or they are not open to change, but at a certain point, they will need to accept that some of the resources that they have been using for more than 10 years are now obsolete. 

It is very simple. All you need to do is to create a subscription. When you create an Azure subscription, you will be creating an Azure account. If you are using Office 365, you already have an Azure Active Directory account.

If you go to Azure.com and use your credentials, you would be able to log in. So, you have a basic panel with services related to Active Directory, but if you need to deploy virtual machines or other paid services, you will need to purchase a subscription. I have my own environment, but I only use it for testing and for making records of customer issues to see what's happening or why the problem is coming.

It is a very easy-to-manage platform. There are many guides. As soon as you enter the portal, you will see all products and services. Every time you click on any specific service, you will find information about the service, its pricing, etc. You will get the required information needed on the platform. I also have experience with IBM's platform, but it was not as easy to handle as the Azure platform. 

The basic tier of Azure Active Directory is free, so many users use the service for free. For a small company having the security and compliance that Azure offers is a great benefit. For small companies that are using the basic services, not having to pay for Azure Active Directory is the main asset because they can manage their users and have authentications tools and security. 

You just need to create an Azure account to get a free trial or subscription. If you sign up for a free subscription, you will have $200 that you can use for a month on any services that you want to try or test. If you're planning to use a paid subscription, you can't have the first month for free until you spend those $200. At that point, you can decide if you want to continue using the platform. You will be paying only for the services that you use. If you have a virtual machine, but you don't use the virtual machine, you won't be charged for that virtual machine. There are, however, some limitations. If you choose to have storage linked to the virtual machine, the storage is charged differently. 

Azure has different tiers. You can use the standard free version. You can have the B1 license that gives you more services. There is a B2 license that extends to even more objects, more users, and more services. So, depending on the license that you have for the product, the capacity changes. The basic tier allows you to manage a certain number of objects, which can be users, groups, permissions, etc. The number is limited because you are using the free version. If you want to manage a bigger company or more objects, you can just purchase a B1 license. If you need more, you can change to the B2 license that's a top tier. 

If the size of your company changes or you need to reduce the number of licenses or services, you can always cancel licenses. You can go back to the lower tier at any time depending on your needs. Most of the big companies use the higher tiers because they have many employees. In domains like education, there are many students, so they need to use more licenses, but most of the small companies or users who are using it for a project use the free version.

If you need to purchase a service, for each and every service that Azure offers, there are different pricing tiers. For example, you don't have to purchase a virtual machine that is too expensive. There are basic virtual machines that may cost you $40 for one month. If you need a very specific machine to do a deployment, you can use it just for the deployment and then delete the virtual machine. You have to pay it only for the hours for which you used that machine, which is a great advantage. If you work with data processing or you're a developer who needs to test new software or a game, you don't need to pay a huge amount of money for a specific virtual machine. You will only be paying for the hours that you need to do the testing. You don't have to pay $6,000 for high-end technology. I know that the idea is to keep people using the virtual machine, the storage account, or any service they have, but if their needs are just limited for a few hours of the month, that's what they will be paying for. So, it is very flexible.

I would recommend Azure Active Directory to everybody. I would recommend others to use it to easily manage all the users. If you are dependent on an on-premises server, those servers may fail. Some people have too many old servers. If you move to the cloud, you don't have to worry about hardware maintenance.

Microsoft offers several ways to keep your data safe on the cloud. For example, you can choose replication. That means that your data will be at two different data centers. You can have your information at two different locations, such as in the east of the USA and in the west of the USA. If you are paying for higher services, all your information can also be in another country or region. So, all the information that a company may have in Azure will be protected if something catastrophic happens, which is something very important, especially for large companies. 

The improvements to the platform are constant, and the feedback that the customers provide to Microsoft is taken very seriously. They have a feedback page where the users can request new features or existing features that they are not happy about. Microsoft takes into account all these requests, and I see the response from the backend team or developers. I can see how they provide new products or good information about what they are doing right now to improve the services. Most of the requests are for new services and ideas, and most of those ideas are seriously reviewed. I can see that over the last few years, how many of these requests have become a part of the platform. So, you see improvements everywhere. There is also a change in Office 365, which will be soon known as Microsoft 365. They're changing the experience, and they are also changing the licenses to include more products. So, changes are constant. I am not saying this because I work for Microsoft. I have also worked for Amazon, and I see similar structures. They are making changes all the time.

Every day, I see the requests of customers and the response from Microsoft to those requests. When all these improvements are added to the platform, for those of us who are on support, the cases become easier to manage. It gets easier to provide solutions because we have more options to resolve the problems, and the customers also have more options. 

There are times when customers don't realize that the platform has changed and the services they used don't exist anymore. Usually, we provide support through Microsoft Teams and remote sessions. So, we go there, and we explain to the customer that they can do this because the platform allows them to select this and then do customization. So, everything is flexible. The customers sometimes are very surprised because they don't know that the platform has changed so fast. The experience of providing support becomes very nice when a customer is amazed by all the new features. They had been working in the old way, and they didn't know that they now have many options on the platform. In such cases, it is a very satisfactory experience for the customer and also for us. In some cases, it takes about 10 minutes, and the problem is solved. The customer becomes very satisfied with the solution.

I would rate it a 10 out of 10. I can't tell how happy people are when they call and are looking for such a service, and they realize that it already exists. They just didn't know about it. This rating is not based on the experience that I have in working with Microsoft; it is based on the experience of the customers I work with.

We mainly use Azure Active Directory for authentication, identity management, and single sign-on. A user can use a local Active Directory password to sign into other platforms, like Zendesk or Zoom. These on-premise users are synced to Azure Active Directory. We have some other users who only use cloud, so they don't have instances on-premise, i.e., they are pure cloud. Both of these types of users can authenticate their credentials with other applications and single sign-on. 

We use Microsoft solutions, such as Microsoft Endpoint Manager for mobile device management (MDM), Microsoft Defender, and Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). For our customers and clients, we do something similar. We also send logs from Microsoft 365 to different SIEMs.

We sync users from on-premise using AD Connect sync. We sync them to Azure Active Directory, where we have some instances. 

We have secure scores and compliance scores. These scores tell you your standpoint in terms of recommendations, vulnerabilities, etc. So, it can tell you what you need to configure to increase your security posture, then you can tell where you are. With the compliance scores, it will tell you what you need to do to improve it. The secure scores will tell you that maybe you should enable MFA for all users or that all admins should have MFA. It gives you a lot of suggestions and recommendations to improve your security posture. 

Microsoft Endpoint Manager acts as a mobile device management tool. It focuses on the firewall and does device compliance policy. There are a lot of policies that you can use to align your organization in regards to compliance and regulations. Also, there are security settings that you can enable.

In Microsoft Defender, it accesses the devices onboarded to your Microsoft Defender so you can see the vulnerabilities in terms of the applications installed on a system as well as the version of the OS that you are using. It shows you the patch management that you need to do for vulnerabilities. 

Authentication and identity management are key. For someone to authenticate your account, it is like having the password or access to your password. If someone gains unauthorized access to an account, then they can perform a lot of malicious activities, such as sending spam emails or falsifying emails, including authorizing payments.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) has improved our customers' security posture. Multi-factor authentication has two layers of authentication, which helps in case you input your credentials into a phishing website and then it has access to your credentials. So if they use your credentials, then you have proof on your phone that was sent to the end user. 

You can also use Conditional Access to block sign-ins from other countries. For example, if someone attempts to login from Canada or the US, and your company is based in Africa or somewhere else, then it blocks that user. In this case, it will flag the user and IP as suspicious.

There is also impossible travel, which is an identity protection feature that flags and blocks. For instance, if you are signing in from California, then in the next two hours, you are logging in from Kenya. We know that a flight to Kenya couldn't possibly happen within two hours.

Admins can set password changes for 30, 60, or 90 days, whether it is on-premise or the cloud.

Sometimes, what one customer may like, another may not like it. We have had customers asking, "Why is Microsoft forcing us to do this?" For example, when you use Exchange Server on-premise, then you can customize it for your company and these customizations are unlimited. However, if you use Exchange Online or with Microsoft 365, then your ability to make modifications is limited. So, only the cloud versus is limited.

I have been using it for four years.

It is very simple to manage.

The scalability is massive. When you get your licenses, those should give you the limits of what you can do, but the limits are considerable. It should scale automatically as your workloads increase.

If enough customers have questions about something, the Microsoft product engineering team will pick it up, document, and design it, then publish it in Microsoft.

At a previous company, I was the technical lead and expert. We were Microsoft partners. So, we picked up tickets for Microsoft 365, working on different issues from eCommerce, Exchange, SharePoint, and OneDrive. 

You can maintain your previous investment in identity management solutions by just integrating them with Azure Active Directory. You can also integrate other solutions with Azure Active Directory, then use Azure Active Directory as a single sign-on.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

Active Directory is a place where all your instances, users, identities are being stored. You can create users and identities, then they are stored in Active Directory. Then, Azure Active Directory is just like a cloud-based scenario. When you create users, they are there. You can join devices to your Active Directory.

You need to have the user's information: their password, email, location and ID. All those things are being stored in Azure Active Directory. 

Deployment time depends on the scope of work. For example, a single user could take about 10 minutes to deploy, if you know what you are doing.

Deployment needs just one person to do it.

It protects your identity and keeps you secure. The return on investment is that it keeps your identity from being compromised or you being scammed. That is the investment that customers pay for.

Previously, only building and global administrators could purchase subscriptions or licenses. Mid-last year, Microsoft made it so users can purchase the license online.

Microsoft business subscription is for 200 to 300 users. If you have more than 300 users, you can't purchase the business plan. You have to purchase the enterprise plan. The enterprise plan is for 301 users and above. 

Pay as you go is also available. If you pay as you go in Azure, you will be billed for whatever you use.

I know AWS has something similar.

It is an excellent solution. I would advise going for it.

I have received several complaints from different people and customers too, "Why do I have to do it two times? I want to do it just one time." However, there is a reason for it - we are increasing the security layer. That is why it takes two times, because it is organizational policy. So, they just have to comply.

Previously, admins could only release quarantined emails, so you would need to speak to the admin to release them. Now, if a user's message gets quarantined, then the end user releases it.

If you have Microsoft 365, then you have Azure AD. They go hand in hand.

I would rate this solution as 10 out of 10.

We have a variety of use cases. The first thing we use it for is Microsoft 365 services. We utilize the single sign-on capability, for use with other SaaS applications. We use MFA, and use it as an identity provider, in general. We make use of the B2B Federation functionality based on Active Directory, as well.

We use a hybrid Azure Active Directory that works in conjunction with our on-premises Active Directory.

Azure AD has security features that have definitely helped to improve our security posture. Our hybrid environment makes it very easy for us to control when we need to integrate with third-party solutions. Normally, we do not allow integration with our on-premises systems and by requiring the third parties to integrate through Azure Active Directory, it gives us an extra layer of security. There is one-way communication from our on-premises Active Directory, which helps to secure our main controllers.

Another thing that we use extensively is conditional access, on top of the Azure Active Directory multi-factor authentication. We are quite happy with the metrics and reports, as well as the logging of risks, such as attempts to sign in from different areas.

So far, we haven't had any incidents. We've seen some attempts to steal our identities or to log in using our credentials but the security provided by this product, including conditional access and MFA, has stopped these attempts. From a security perspective, we are quite happy.

Overall, our security posture has improved, especially when we are talking about MFA. We have MFA deployed on-premises for all of our critical applications. Moving beyond this, to the cloud, I cannot imagine dealing with all of these different SaaS products without having AD or another cloud identity provider in place. We could use a competing product but definitely, we cannot survive solely with our on-premises solution.

This solution has improved our end-user experience, in particular, because of the single sign-on feature. Our users can quite easily begin working. For example, I've worked with other SaaS solutions and one thing that users complain about is the additional steps required for MFA. Some of the non-tech-savvy end-users sometimes struggle, but overall, I would say the experience is quite good.

We are a group of companies and have different Active Directory Forests and domains. Using Azure Active Directory, collaboration is much easier for us because we are able to configure it at the cloud level.

The most valuable feature is its ability to act as an identity provider for other cloud-based, SaaS applications. In our bank, this is the main identity provider for such features. Not on Office 365 applications, but on others like Salesforce.

The B2B Federation functionality is not perfect and could be improved. It is not on the same level that we could have if it were being used on-premises. It offers a different experience, which is a bit complicated and has some additional drawbacks.

The MFA has some limitations compared to the legacy version. We still use our on-premises version because it works with our legacy applications using certain protocols. 

I think that as Microsoft is going to the cloud, they are turning off the on-premises features too quickly because the functionality is not yet at par.

I would like to see more features included, such as some surrounding the lifecycle of licenses, and access management for non-Azure cloud applications

We have been using Azure Active Directory for approximately three years.

Prior to working with this company, I worked for Microsoft and I used Azure Active Directory as a user over a period of four to six years.

I'm pretty happy with the stability of this product. In all of the time that I have used it, I do remember a couple of instances where there was downtime. However, these did not last for a significant length of time.

I can recall that it went down one time, for approximately four hours, in several years. SLAs are definitely met by Microsoft.

Scalability-wise, it works for us. We haven't had any problems and it is quite scalable.

Our company has 4,000 employees, so it isn't very large but so far, so good.

There are two people who are administrators that are involved in the managing and administration of Azure AD. I do not have administrative rights. Rather, I am set up for viewing only. 

In general, I would rate Microsoft support a seven out of ten. Sometimes we needed to speak with different people about the same problem, and each time, we had to describe the situation from scratch.

I have no experience with other B2B Federation solutions, so I can't compare Azure Active Directory in this regard.

Our initial setup was complex in some ways and easier in others. The complexity stemmed from the fact that we are a bank, and the security team chose the most complex deployment. Because the security people chose the most complex options, they are missing things. For example, self-service password reset is not working for us because it's one-direction communication.

In summary, our initial setup was complex because it was chosen as such. Although it is the most secure, we are missing some benefits that we would have if we had chosen a different setup.

The deployment itself was not very long. However, the planning stage was lengthy because of the in-depth discussions with the security team. Overall, the deployment took perhaps two weeks or less.

Our deployment strategy was a rather high-level approach and considered that our primary identity provider is on-premises AD, which means that we were able to take some of the details from there. We did not have to consider everything from scratch. For example, our password hash is one-way, so there are no writebacks. We defined it this way because it's quite secure. Similarly, we needed integration with third parties, such as other cloud providers. This meant that we were not afraid if something is breached because there would be no impact on our Active Directory. The only impact from a problem would be at the Azure Active Directory level.

The cost of Azure AD is one of the biggest benefits, as it is available for use free of charge when you start with Office 365. It comes with the basic version of it and you can move to the more expensive plans with additional features, but these are still very competitive compared to other vendors.

By comparison, other vendors offered an independent MFA product but at quite an expensive price. With Microsoft, it was already included in the price. The bundling approach that Microsoft uses is good; although competitors may offer a more compelling solution, we already have access to the one from Microsoft at no additional cost.

We evaluated some other products from an MFA perspective but I have no hands-on experience with them. I received many good recommendations about both Okta and Ping Identity solutions.

My advice for anybody who is considering Azure Active Directory is that if they are going to use other Microsoft services, like Office 365, then it's no brainer. It's the perfect solution for situations like this.

If you're using a different stack, like Google, and you choose a different cloud provider like Google or Amazon, then if you are using Microsoft, it is still good to use Azure Active Directory. The costs are relatively cheap compared to others.

However, if you're not using Microsoft products, then I would suggest that you could look to other vendors like Okta, for example. I had quite a few good references regarding Okta and the Ping Identity products. Ultimately, you are free to choose but from a cost perspective, Microsoft is great.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I was a consultant. I recently changed my job (seven days ago). Most of my customers did everything in Azure. They used Azure Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) as well as Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) to sync a user's profile using AD Connect and a federated model. So, they could access an application on-premises as well as in a cloud. 

I am now a CTO for a big hospital. I manage Azure AD for all hospitals as the CTO. They also use Office 365 across all four of their hospitals. 

The solution is hybrid cloud. We have the Active Directory on-premises and Active Directory Domain services in Azure. This is where I use AD Connect (or sync server) to sync the user's profile.

Azure AD has features that have helped improve security posture. From a security point of view, they integrated with Okta, which is one of the integrations that we used for a customer's use case. From there, their entire security posture is managed and integrated with Azure.

It gave better visibility on our customers' security posture - the way that they configure users, configure their end user computing, and multi-factor authentication. This is where they get better visibility and manageability through this particular solution.

A use case that we did for an end user in a manufacturing organization: We used WVD with biometric authentication because 1,500 processes need to happen in a process. The user didn't want to use a login using their credentials. They wanted to use fingerprinting or tap their ID. That is where we integrated with the authentication. Now, they can process in a couple of hours, and they run those 1,500 processes every day. This changed their login process, which improved the manufacturing process. This helped a lot for their high deployment.

In my current organization, it is connected only for Office 365. We are getting into other services that Azure has to offer, but that has not yet started. The first use case that we are going to do is backup and recovery through Azure AD.

We are trying to do backup for some Tier 1 applications through Commvault. We will use that data to restore within the Azure environment or Azure Virtual Network (VNet), recovering all the applications. We then make sure that we have the capability for recovering those applications end-to-end. This is where Azure AD will play a huge role, so we don't have to come down to on-premises for authentication.

• The authentication process, e.g., multi-factor authentication.
• Directory Domain Services.
• Azure AD Connect (sync services).

The biggest thing is if they could integrate with their IPS/IDS processes as well as have integration with another app, like a third-party application. Varonis was another solution that my customers are trying to integrate with ADFS. For some reason, they were seeing some difficulties with the integration. There is a case open with Microsoft on this particular thing.

The only issue is the OU is not properly synced. Therefore, you have to do a manual sync sometimes or you might lose the connector due to AD Connect or sync servers.

I have been using it for a couple of years.

I haven't seen any major issues. 

We had a customer with roughly around 80,000 users. They had three SMEs or FTEs managing their Active Directory environment or solution.

Maintenance-wise, we need at least two FTEs for backup, making sure that we have the right coverage 24/7.

I think we can add more systems to make sure that we can connect. The documentation provides more detail about the sizing information for OVA files or AD Connect files on the server. So, you have those kinds of capabilities built into the scalability.

Before, we used to manage most technical issues. For example, if there was a critical thing that had to happen, then we would open a case. The support that we used to get from Microsoft was great because we were a Gold partner with Microsoft, so we had good access for the technical team.

We don't use the technical support too much because we have engaged a partner for my current organization. 

The initial setup was so straightforward. The documentation is good. There were no problems deploying it. We did the deployment for one customer in less than an hour. Another customer took some time because it is more like a process for change management. Otherwise, the actual installation, download, and configuration took less than a couple of hours.

My previous company's focus was on how to integrate a customer's Active Directory with Okta, how to integrate it with MFAs, and how to integrate with security IMs.

The deployment was easy to do and integrate with on-premises. So if it was a small- or medium-sized customer, we could bring them into the cloud in no time. Also, we could start looking into other applications that the customer could use: Docker containers or DevOps. This is where we spent most of the time, i.e., with customer design.

Every hospital with Office 365 comes with Active Directory Domain Services so you need to sync all your users. That is how the implementation is done today.

At my previous employer, most of our customers' application deployment used Ruby on Rails in their AWS environment and were looking for an authentication process. So, we installed Active Directory or ADFS in Azure for a specific client. Then, all applications would get authenticated to Azure Active Directory and synced from their on-premises environment. 

There was another client for whom we installed Azure Directory Domain Services, which synced with their on-premises data and federated model so we could get the single sign-on. We then installed Azure VMware Solution in Azure for their expanding or extending their on-premises VMware architecture.

We created a questionnaire where we documented the customer's current environment. For example, customers wanted to sync the amount of users. We then used that questionnaire to take care of the prerequisite before we even started deploying this solution.

The whole deployment process should take less than one FTE.

It provides an organization flexibility to move towards the public cloud, so their workload can be upstream. They can see that they don't have to come down to their on-premises for any authorization authentications. That is where we were seeing more development environments, staging environments, and DevOps environments, as most of our customers were pushing towards the public cloud, which would then be integrated with their Azure Active Directory.

The licensing model is straightforward. I don't think there are any issues with the E3 license or E5 license.

We had a customer with very traditional architecture in AWS. We spun up the ECP instance, then installed and replicated the Active Directory. Other than that, I don't think we had another customer who was going in a different direction.

We have a budget for Q4 2021. By Q1 2022, we are hoping to get one hospital completely in Azure by 2022.

The only way to learn about the value that Azure brings to the table is if a customer can use as an evaluation copy or license. Then, they can integrate and push the development OUs or the test OU to make sure that they can integrate with the MFAs.

I would rate this solution as an eight or nine (out of 10).

I use it for managing identities, access, and security in a centralized way. I help other people use this product.

Using Azure AD has improved our security posture overall, more than anything I've ever worked with.

It enables end-users to be more secure without it actually affecting their work. Usually, security solutions makes it harder for them, so many start using other solutions instead, solutions that are not managed or monitored by the organization. But when we use Azure AD's Conditional Access, for example, as long as they behave, users don't even notice it.

The passwordless feature means they don't even need to have a password anymore. It's easier for users to be more secure. You can invite anyone to collaborate in a secure way. 

Passwordless sign-in, which is one of the new features where you no longer need to have a password, is one of the great features. Passwords have always been hard for end-users, but not so hard to bypass for bad guys. It often doesn't matter how complex or long your password is. If a bad guy can trick you into giving it to him or can sniff your keyboard or your network, or access it through malware, your password doesn't matter anyway. So all the complexity, length of the password, and having to regularly change it is hard for users, but it doesn't stop hackers. And that's what makes passwordless so valuable.

Multi-factor authentication is good as it allows you to answer a notification or even an SMS or a phone call, but that has become more unsecure now because the bad guys are learning new way to bypass these methods. But using passwordless technology, you're not even using a password anymore. You're basically just signing a logon request without actually sending, typing or storing the password. This is awesome for any user, regardless of whether you're a factory worker or a CFO. It's secure and super-simple.

It also stops phishing, which is amazing. If someone tricks a user into going into the "Macrosoft" store or some other site that looks like the real site, they can trick the user into signing in there and then they can steal the password. But if the user is using passwordless, the passwordless solution would say, "Sorry, I don't have a relationship here. I can't sign in." In that way, it can stopping phishing, which is one of the most common attack vectors right now.

Another feature that has improved our security posture is Conditional Access where we can not only say "yes" or "no" to a sign-in, but we can also have conditions. We can say, "Sure, you can sign in, but you need to be part of the right group. You need to come from a managed client. You can't come in with a risky sign-in. You need to come in from a certain platform or a certain network." You can have a really complex set of rules and if those rules are not fulfilled you will not be able to sign in, or we can require MFA or even control the session. That is also a really good security feature.

The B2B feature is another good one where, if I want to give someone access to my my apps or data, instead of creating an account and a password and giving that info to the user, I can invite that user so he or she can use their own existing account. That way, I don't need to manage password resets and the like. The B2B feature enables collaborating with anyone, anytime, anywhere.

The Azure AD Application Proxy, which helps you publish applications in a secure way, is really good, but has room for improvement. We are moving from another solution into the Application Proxy and the other one has features that the App Proxy doesn't have. An example is where the the role you're signing in as will send you to different URLs, a feature that App Proxy doesn't have (yet).

With Azure AD, if you look in detail on any of the features, you will see 20 good things but it can be missing one thing. All over the place there are small features that could be improved, but these improvement is coming out all the time. It's not like, "Oh, it's been a year since new features came out." Features are coming out all the time and I've even contacted Microsoft and requested some changes and they've been implemented as well.

I have been using Azure Active Directory for close to eight years now.

The stability or availability is incredible. It's super-good. However, just the other week, there was an outage for a few hours, so it's not 100 percent. But in Microsoft's defense, that hasn't happened for a long time.

What I also usually point out to people is that if you host your own solution and things break in the middle of the night, who's going to look at it? With this solution, you know that in the first millisecond that something breaks, 10 people or 100 people are looking at it. You get constant feedback about what's going on and you usually get a full report afterwards about what actually happened and how they will prevent them in the future. They are really good at managing these outages.

I don't know what the uptime is, but it's still 99.999 or something like that. It's super-trustworthy, but it's not 100 percent. What is? Still, it's likely much better than a private on-premises solution could ever be.

In terms of scalability there are no limits. I have customers with 10 people and others with up to 300,000, and everything in between. There is no difference. I haven't had to think about memory or disk space or CPU in a long time because everything just works. It's super-scalable.

We have 100 customers and all of them use Azure AD. They are spread all over the world. In Sweden, where I'm from, we have government municipalities, we have private corporations, hospitals, manufacturing. Everybody needs this. It doesn't matter which market or which area you work in. I don't see a target audience for this. It's everyone.

Their tech support is pretty good, depending on who you end up talking to. If you open a support request, you can be asked quite basic questions at first: "Have you tried turning it on and off again?" Sometimes we need to go through five people to get the correct people, the people who know the problem area really well. We usually dig really deep into the area and learn al lot first. We need someone who is expert in this product and who knows exactly how that area of the product works. Sometimes it takes a while to get to the correct person, but once you get there, they're usually super-knowledgeable, super-friendly and quick to reply. It can be tricky to find the right person. But I suppose that is the same in any company. 

Over the years, we have built up a contact network so we can usually contact the right people right away, as we are a Microsoft partner. But because this review is for everyone, I would suggest that you keep asking until you'll end up at the right people.

Overall, Microsoft is really attentive. Previously, you could say, "Can you show me the roadmap for the next three years?" and they would say "Sure." They don't really do that anymore because they say, "It now depends on what you want." We can help influence Microsoft how to prioritize. They have daily and weekly meetings where they discuss "What do people want now? How should we prioritize?" It's a totally new Microsoft compared with a few years ago. If I see something missing, they usually come up with it pretty quickly.

I see people moving from other solutions into Azure AD because they're not satisfied with the other solutions. 

The initial setup is a straightforward process, for such a complex technology. Although there are a lot of moving parts involved in actually setting it up, it is quite easy.

I've set this up for many and, in general, it takes less than a day to get things up and running. Then, of course, there's tons of optional configuration to improve and secure things, but just getting it up and running takes less than a day.

The implementation strategy used to be helping them get to the cloud, by doing things like making sure that they clean up the accounts in the on-premises solution and setting up the synchronization rules. But nowadays, most of my customers are people who have Azure AD in place already. So now I'm trying to enable and configure and improve security configuration. For example, you don't have to set up the passwordless feature and you don't have to do multi-factor authentication. They are optional. So my task now is more one of improving their configuration and turning on security features. A lot of it is secure by default, but some features require you to configure and set them up.

With the licensing there are so many features involved, and different features for different licensing levels. Those levels include the free version, as well as Premium P1, Premium P2. My approach with my clients is usually, "What kind of licenses do you have? Okay, let's improve this, because you have it already. You're paying for it already. Why not use it?" 

The next step is, "These features are included in the licensing you don't have. Do you think it's worth it?" I talk to them, I explain them, and I demonstrate them. They will usually say, "Yeah, we need that one."

I don't know other solutions really deeply. I know of them, but I'm a specialist who is focused on this one. But I realize, when I talked to other specialists in other areas, that they are solving the same problem, so they usually have similar solutions.

What Microsoft is winning on is that people used to say, "Buy the best product, the best in class or best in breed for each area." But that has changed now. "Buy the best ecosystem" is the better approach. If I have Azure AD as my identity and access solution, and if I also use Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and the Defender for Office 365, and other Microsoft solutions, I can then go to one portal, one place, and see how my apps are doing, how my users are doing, how my devices are doing, and how my data is doing. You get this super-integrated ecosystem where everything talks to each other. That is the strength.

In my opinion Azure AD is a fantasic standalone product, but you have so much more benefit from using it together with other Microsoft solutions.

The user usually doesn't care if we use Microsoft or any other vendor's to protect his identity or his computer or his data. They just want to do their jobs. But as admin, I see the advantage of using the same provider. I can actually create a query saying, "Show me all users who logged in to Azure AD from a device with this operating system, accessing this application, and who have a risk on their device, where a document is classified as sensitive." I can do all of that in one query for identity application devices and the data. That's the strength, having that insight into everything. And when it comes to security and Azure AD, Microsoft has 3,000 full-time security researchers, and they spend over a billion dollars each year on security research alone.

What's amazing is that the CIA, the FBI, and these big companies or organizations are using Azure AD, and they have really high requirements for audits and protection. As a "regular" organization, you can get the same level of security without have to ask for it. You get to ride on the coattails of that amazing security without spending $1 billion yourself.

If another Microsoft customer is hit by something bad, Microsoft is going to stop it for the rest of its customers. If you're the first to get hit by new bad malware, that may be tough, but all of the other customers are instantly protected because different customers share threat intelligence, in a way. You get the benefit of all the security discoveries that Microsoft makes, instantly.

Talk to someone who knows a lot about it. Sure, you can look at everything on the docs.microsoft.com page, but it can be hard to understand what each feature is and the value it give you. Talk to someone who knows both licensing and technology, to understand what's there and what you should pay for and what you should not pay for.

There are also a lot of good videos out there, like sessions from Microsoft Ignite. You also have the Microsoft Mechanics video series on YouTube with a lot of videos. So if you like to learn through video, there's a lot available for you. You can also go to docs of Microsoft.com and search for Azure AD. You will get like a starting page where you can learn the identity and access basics or also how you integrate apps. There is a link collection with everything and anything you would like to know. Or you can call me.

We are Security advisors. We help people, we train people, we implement it for them, we document it, we teach them, and we talk at seminars. We sell our knowledge. We don't sell solutions. There are 25 people in our company and five to 10 people are working with Azure AD. It's not that we need five for our daily operations, it's just that's how many of us are working with it. In general, a company might need one to five people working on it. If I need to set up a feature for five people or 500,000 people I do the same steps. The thing that is different in bigger companies, is that you need to communicate, you need to educate, you need to write Knowledge Base articles, you need to inform the service desk. All of those things are just to prepare users. But that has nothing to do with Azure AD. The technology is super-simple. It's more that the process around it is different in different companies.