Microsoft Entra External ID Reviews

I am working on a project for a university where we are trying to create a digital twin of a coral reef restoration project in Saudi Arabia. This involves using a big data platform and developing a mobile web application for research purposes. As part of the project, we are widely using data analytics tools, data fabric, data lake, and other Azure services.

The most impactful feature of Microsoft Entra External ID for access management needs is the federated identities, which allows us to use single sign-on with different federated logins. This feature is valuable because many companies prefer to have a single sign-on solution. Additionally, integration using federated authentication or token keys is possible. However, I am not well-versed in the governance part. In our current setup, the initial setup process for Microsoft Entra External ID is based on the use case, and it is generally straightforward for simple tasks like user creation and management. However, it can become complex depending on the project requirements.

Some areas where Microsoft Entra External ID could improve include cost and enhanced security for integration with federated logins like LinkedIn and Gmail.

I have worked with Microsoft Entra External ID and similar solutions for approximately five years, depending on the projects.

I have not encountered any stability issues with Microsoft Entra External ID. I would rate its stability between eight and nine out of ten.

Microsoft Entra External ID is quite scalable, and I would rate its scalability between eight and nine out of ten.

The quality of Microsoft customer support varies. With an enterprise contract, good resources are usually provided, especially in regions like Saudi Arabia or UAE. However, we have faced challenges with support quality, especially in some subcontinent areas where the resources might not be as experienced. I would rate their technical support five to six out of ten.

At Safaricom, we used solutions like Splunk and Dynatrace, which were replaced with open-source solutions due to the company's strategy to move towards open-source platforms.

The initial setup process for Microsoft Entra External ID depends on the use case. It is generally straightforward for simple tasks but can become complex for more intricate scenarios.

Microsoft Entra External ID is a SaaS-based solution, primarily incurring operational OPEX costs. Companies can leverage it for setting up external identities without needing to develop their own solutions.

The cost can be a factor for Microsoft Entra External ID, but in general, it offers a scalable and efficient solution compared to deploying individual solutions.

The existing information details my personal experience, preferences, and potential areas for improvement with Microsoft Entra External ID. Based on this experience, I would recommend it due to its scalability and security features. Overall, I would rate the solution seven to eight out of ten.

Public Cloud

Microsoft Azure

I have experience with these products, and currently, we are using them in our organization.

Regarding Auto-GPT, it was only a POC.

I mainly work with Microsoft products in our system because we have an organizational subscription.

For security purposes, we do Intra ID authentication and we have separate authorization.

We use Microsoft Entra External ID for all our Azure products, whether it is Functions or OpenAI, or Synapse for analytics purposes. We use Intra ID only for all of them.

When it comes to Microsoft Entra External ID, Microsoft itself is the best distributor. They provide very good documents for training and knowledge.

It is very easy to use. When it comes to Microsoft products, all are very easy to install and very easy to use. That is the best feature of Microsoft products.

I have not utilized the adaptive authentication feature of Microsoft Entra External ID.

Previously there was a question about adaptive authentication, and this is the first time I am hearing about it. I will go through some documentation and review it.

I think the analytics and reporting tools are good, but when it comes to UI, it should be more user-friendly. Something similar to ServiceNow features or a Salesforce kind of UI would be good, as it currently looks more black and white.

What I would to see in the future is that authentications and authorizations should be policy-level configurations and field-level configurations, rather than at the entry point.

I see these features in their competitors, such as in other cloud features, ServiceNow and Salesforce.

I have been working with it for three years.

We do have one-on-one technical support. Any issue that we are stuck with, they provide full-fledged support to us and to the organization.

I would rate their technical support as 10 out of 10.

Positive

We have actually reviewed Auto-GPT for workflows, but not so much productivity with it. That is why we are trying to explore CrewAI.

I am exploring CrewAI now. I want to see what their offerings are.

As of latest, when it comes to my experience, I am not satisfied.

I am not at all satisfied with the workflow augmentation regarding agentic AI workflows.

On a scale from one to ten, I rate Microsoft Entra External ID a seven.

Public Cloud

Microsoft Azure

We are a Microsoft Partner providing consultancy services for Power Automate implementations to our customers. We work with the entire Azure stack, including Azure AD and other Microsoft products, to facilitate a transition to cloud-based infrastructures.

Microsoft Entra External ID is more secure, offering a secure environment. It is crucial for hybrid environments, especially for integrating existing on-site infrastructures with cloud-based Active Directory, such as in Office 365 implementations. The solution's ability to handle large datasets and identify outliers effectively enhances security data processing.

Microsoft should normalize, simplify, and uniformly communicate pricing structures across products. More stability in the platform, fewer changes to authentication mechanisms, and increased integration across platforms to improve usability and security infrastructure are needed.

The scalability of compute performance is good. However, end-user workloads experience increased latency in a cloud environment compared to on-premises resources.

Microsoft technical support can be slow as they tend to validate the entire environment before proposing a solution, which can be frustrating.

Neutral

Clients have been using Active Directory for a long time, which creates confusion and challenges when transitioning to cloud-based environments like Microsoft Entra External ID.

Microsoft's pricing is complex and difficult to fathom due to a range of different licensing options. The transition toward cloud-based subscription pricing involves various configurations and conditions that make it hard to evaluate the cost to customers.

Clients typically migrate from Microsoft infrastructure. Other cloud providers have their own directory infrastructures, but they generally face similar general issues.

I rate Microsoft Entra External ID a seven out of ten. Latency is a consideration when sourcing computing resources remotely, impacting performance compared to on-premises solutions.

Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft Azure

I'm more familiar with the Microsoft Entra External ID, the Active Directory external identities, because we have a hybrid environment.

For the parts that I handle, the on-premise part is easier for me. We have an MSP that handles most of those issues, so I don't really have to do much there.

The best features of the Microsoft Entra External ID are that it's fairly easy to use, and I personally prefer the on-premise part. I can use the cloud Microsoft Entra and it's fine, but I grew up in the industry using Active Directory on an on-premise server, so I still prefer that.

I assess the impact of the integrated single sign-on in Microsoft Entra for simplifying the user access experience as positive. Users don't have any issues and it's been fairly easy for them.

I haven't utilized the adaptive authentication feature.

We haven't used the customization capability for user journeys within the Microsoft Entra External ID.

I don't have experience trying to create distinct policies for different user types.

I haven't leveraged the analytics or reporting tools.

I have been using it for less than half a year.

There have been a couple of times when it was unavailable because of Microsoft issues, but other than that, I don't remember any problems.

I'd rate the stability of the Microsoft Entra External ID as a 10.

The Microsoft Entra External ID is a scalable solution. I haven't had to do anything in terms of scaling it, since we only have about 100 users and added 20 users since I joined the organization.

Microsoft support for the Microsoft Entra External ID is good. My MSP handles all of that, and I have never had an issue with Microsoft support, so I'm very happy.

Positive

I didn't use any other IAM solutions or IDaaS solutions before this job.

With the Microsoft Entra External ID, I have a little experience with the permissions management portion, but not a lot at this point.

I haven't been using the permissions management portion for long because our MSP handles most of that.

We had the Microsoft Entra External ID before I came to the organization. I only joined a little over two years ago, so that happened before I got here.

I don't really have to use the Microsoft Entra External ID often because we have an MSP that handles 95% of what we have to do there. The times that I have gone into it, I found it easy to use and I haven't had any issues with it.

I would recommend the Microsoft Entra External ID to others.

I am the Director of Technology with that company.

I rate Microsoft Entra External ID a nine out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft Azure

I am using Microsoft Entra External ID to manage our applications, access, and everything related to our backend.

Microsoft Entra External ID has helped manage all our applications, access, and backend systems effectively.

The single sign-on access is the most useful feature we use. Additionally, Microsoft Entra External ID supports our AI-driven security measures well, allowing us to manage everything effectively.

I would like to see a more detailed alert system that provides a summary of why alerts are generated, who is generating them, and the reasons behind it.

I have been using Microsoft Entra External ID for three to four years.

As of now, everything related to stability is okay with Microsoft Entra External ID.

Microsoft Entra External ID is scalable, which makes it useful for larger companies.

Technical support is good. The documentation is very thorough, reducing the need for support. However, when needed, their support is adequate. Their response time could be improved.

Neutral

There is room for improvement in AI technology for Microsoft Entra External ID, particularly in providing detailed alerts. I would recommend Microsoft Entra External ID to larger companies, but due to cost, not to smaller ones. From my perspective, I rate it seven out of ten.

Public Cloud

Microsoft Azure

It is for Office 365, and then for Exchange server. It's for the Entra, and then to link up with Okta.

My company, as well as my customers, use it. 

It is easy to onboard users and it's easy to manage.

The security controls in Entra ID are quite okay because they integrate for ID authentication. We need that; they're secure. If it's not integrated with another solution, meaning that it's not secure, it's okay. It's quite secure for me because you're all integrated.

There's room for improvement in synchronization times. It takes around 50 minutes to synchronize with the local AD. We need faster synchronization, ideally within 30 minutes. Any profile or password changes should be reflected quickly.

The only issue has been regarding the synchronization only. But everything else is quite okay for me. There haven't been any issues. It's not a client of my customer. 

The issue regarding synchronization is that their staff, when they create a profile during onboarding, or when they want to change their password, sometimes there's a problem with the synchronization in the office.

I would like to see faster synchronization.

It's new for me; it has been around four months.

It's good. There's a quite good response. They respond to the issues and create a ticket.

Positive

I'm a system engineer, so I work with many solutions like, VMware. My employer uses Microsoft Exchange, Azure, and Azure 365.

It integrates quite well with existing IT infrastructure. We use Azure platform to integrate with Entra, leveraging both B2B and our private cloud.

I also integrated it with third-party tools like OKTA. It integrated well.

It's quite easy to manage and monitor. Overall, I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

Entra ID is quite acceptable because other solutions are quite similar. But since this Entra ID is for a hybrid environment, I see the link with both the external and the internal. So we need that synchronization to be improved.

We use Microsoft Entra External ID for cross-company collaboration by importing applications through enterprise applications. Most applications have APIs that easily connect to Azure. We generate a token, ID, and key, which we input into the application server to link them. This allows our AD users to connect to these applications.

The most beneficial feature for us is the ease of setup. With about five clicks, we can generate unique IDs and keys and set up in less than 30 minutes. We can also generate these for multiple years simultaneously, which is convenient.

In Azure, you can set up access rules. Just because an app is linked to Active Directory doesn’t mean everyone can access it automatically. You can make it so users have to give consent before getting access. You can also control which apps can connect to Active Directory. For Microsoft Exchange, we use multi-factor authentication to protect our information, which helps keep it secure by requiring more than just a password to log in.

Centralizing user management has positively impacted our operational costs and efficiency. We no longer need multiple systems to manage users, especially in our SaaS applications. This has improved turnaround time for user management tasks and streamlined our processes, making things more efficient.

We use the SaaS version, so there's no on-premises infrastructure. The integration is mainly done through setup, linking it to our domain and Active Directory.

Technical support needs improvement.

I have been working with the product for five years. 

The support is poor so that I would rate it a four out of ten. You can't always be sure your issues will be resolved. If they don't have a solution, they might leave it unresolved. It also takes a long time to get help. I had an issue where I was engaged with support for two months across five different locations, and sometimes, the support team wasn't knowledgeable enough or just left the issue unresolved. To make the most of Microsoft products, you need to have an in-house expert to manage things without relying on Microsoft support.

Neutral

To implement the solution, you will have to download it. 

We don't pay separately for Microsoft Entra External ID as it's part of our Microsoft Exchange subscription.

I'd recommend Entra External ID for medium to large companies (100+ staff), as it's great for managing complexity with more users. I wouldn't recommend it for companies with less than 50 staff. I rate it a nine out of ten. We haven't integrated it with third-party solutions beyond the external applications we connect.

We have limited access to Microsoft Entra External ID. We maintain a couple of virtual machines for our IT-related activities.

Microsoft Entra External ID offers numerous advantages. There's no need to maintain anything on-premises, which results in a significant IT infrastructure cost saving. I find Active Directory much easier to manage now compared to on-premise solutions.

There are no complaints or issues I have faced at the moment.

I have been working with this tool for two months now.

So far, everything is stable, and I haven't encountered any downtime or technical errors.

I have not yet contacted Microsoft support.

Positive

I joined a new company recently, and we are now using Microsoft Entra External ID.

The initial setup took a couple of days. It was user-friendly and straightforward.

Given that the company does not have a budget for this year, we have not evaluated the return on investment for Microsoft Entra External ID.

The university provides us with a free license, so we do not have any setup costs currently associated with this tool.

I would rate Microsoft Entra External ID as ten out of ten, primarily because of the advantages the Azure infrastructure brings, particularly in reducing the need for on-premises management.

Public Cloud

Microsoft Azure