Microsoft Entra ID Reviews

We use it for the single sign-on to different products that we have, and it works pretty well.

In general terms, we use it as an admin tool. If we want to set up accounts for people, it's easier for us to do it like this because everything is connected to different groups.

It's a very intuitive platform. It's easy to create groups and add people.

I have used Okta in the past. Okta is easy to use, and it's also very friendly. Even users who have no tech experience would be able to use Okta.

When it comes to Azure, creating certain things or getting different resources isn't very clear. You need a certain level of knowledge of the system. It could be a little bit more friendly so that some of the things can be done easily, but after everything is created, it's easy to use.

I've been using this solution for five years. In this company, I've been using it for two years, and before that, I used it for about three years.

It's good. It has never hung up.

They're good. We don't have issues with scalability because we are not like Amazon or other companies that are super huge and have got tons of traffic.

I don't handle it directly now, but based on my previous experience, they're pretty fast. I'd rate them a 10 out of 10.

There was probably the Google management system, but it works similarly to Azure AD. 

I was not involved in its deployment.

In terms of our environment, it's a private cloud. We have the infrastructure within the platform, but all the software, all the usage, and other things are handled by us. We're private because we're a big company, so we're able to afford it. We're not an IT company, so we don't need so much processing power. So, we use Azure as a PaaS solution.

We use it as a connector for different applications. We have Adobe Sign and applications on AWS. AWS has a translation solution, and people have accounts over there. They have their translations of different products and things like that. That's how we use it.

In terms of maintenance, everything is done by Microsoft. We are just the end users.

The return on investment is easier to calculate with Okta. It's a bit complicated to calculate in the case of Azure. Of course, Azure is already a trusted platform. It's pretty big, and it's handled by Microsoft, so there are no issues with that, but it's easier to check the return on investment with Okta.

I'd recommend Azure Active Directory if you are a big company. For small or medium companies, it's probably not the best idea in the world because of the pricing. If you are a small company, you can probably deploy your own solutions because you're not handling a website with tons of traffic. If you are not like Adidas, Nike, or Walmart, you can do it in a way that is more localized than handling everything through a big price solution. However, Azure tends to provide you with solutions that are easier to use. If it was cheaper, I'd definitely recommend going for it.

I didn't evaluate any other solution. 

I'd rate Azure Active Directory a 10 out of 10.

We use Azure AD to manage users in terms of user accounts and profiles. We also use it to manage applications, access control, and application management.

Azure AD has helped improve the onboarding and offboarding process, especially with the user provisioning and SSO. With Azure AD, once a user account is created, the user automatically gets synced across all of our applications without the admin having to touch each application once at a time.

The solution helped improve our onboarding process by saving us a lot of time.

The feature I have found the most valuable is user provisioning (SSO). Azure Active Directory provides a single pane of glass for managing use cases. 

How it works is once it has all been set up, it allows the user to use the same credential – the username and password – across multiple applications. It creates ease of use for the user as they don't have to keep entering a username and password across multiple applications.

Azure AD allows us to manage the users' access from a single point. In a typical environment, if, for example, a user exits the company and the account needs to be disabled, you would have to go across each application to disable that access. With the Microsoft experience, you just have to disable it from the Azure Active Directory, and then it syncs across all of the applications. Once the account is disabled on the Azure, the accounts are disabled on all applications. The user instantly loses access across all applications without the admin having to go to each application one at a time. When you are offboarding an exited user or an employee that leaves the organization, there's no room for error in terms of missing out or forgetting to revoke an access for a particular application.

I would like to see Microsoft communicate how they intend to manage legacy applications. Right now, you still have to deploy a hosted domain server (which comes at an extra cost) if you have a legacy application that cannot sync properly with the enterprise applications and the modern applications.

I have been using Azure Active Directory for about five years now. 

Azure is stable. 

Azure is scalable. 

Microsoft's tech support is very responsive and really supportive. They will work with you if you have any concerns or if you have any issues. They have experts that will be able to jump on a call with you and assist you in making sure that whatever your concerns are, they all get resolved.

Positive

I did not previously use a different solution. 

The initial deployment was straightforward for me because I already had a pretty good experience managing the on-prem Active Directory. The deployment of the directory itself does not take long. However, it took us about a couple of months to carry out the user creation, create the Conditional Access policies, and to test. You have to test your policies before you go live. We had a lot of design to do in terms of setup, testing, rollout, and setup for each feature that we needed to implement. We had more of a test phase before the go-live phase. That's why it took quite a while. 

We did our deployment in-house. We had three people on the deployment. 

We have seen a return on investment from Azure AD because, first of all, we have been able to use the Cloud infrastructure to bring in more response. Also, it has high availability. We can easily scale it up or down, thereby managing costs. Now, in terms of the Azure Active Directory Office 365, we also have scale licenses where we get to manage the licenses across multiple users, thereby reducing costs of having to purchase one per user.

I would say that Azure AD's pricing is very reasonable because of the structure and in terms of the solution. I can offer this tip for the licensing: if you plan on going to a CSV, you can get a certain level of discounts.

We looked at Google Workspace when we were trying to migrate from on-prem to the cloud. At the end of the day, after analyzing and comparing most of the features that we are going to go with and how it will integrate with our existing system, we found the Microsoft Azure Active Directory to be more effective and better suited to our requirements.

This is how Azure AD stacks up against Okta. Okta is a third-party application for syncing user profiles from on-prem to cloud. However, Microsoft already has a pretty good application for that, which is Azure's AD Connect. It's more or less the same thing as Okta and more effective in the sense that with AD Connect we can actually get to query the user objects in terms of all the attributes to work on-prem and on the Cloud, just the same way you probably do it if you run an LDAP query. This is something you might not get with Okta because of the integration with the Active Directory.

My advice to someone looking to implement the solution is: your in-house technical support needs to understand the technology and your requirements as an organization because Azure is very robust. You need to know exactly what you intend to deploy and the requirements you intend or need. If you have that covered, Azure AD will be simple and straightforward to use. If you are able to plan and manage the users and services, it is really cost-effective.

I have identified that Azure Active Directory has a lot of features that are handy and useful. Microsoft is also constantly improving on it and it has all the required features that my organization requires. 

Azure AD is helpful and user friendly when it comes to managing identity and access tasks. It helps you manage that effectively because you have all the clouds, you have profile creation, you have all the features. Everything is easy to locate and simple to navigate.

Azure AD allows us to improve compliance for enforcing fine-tuned and adaptive access controls. It also allows us to manage access to all the applications in our environment. With it, we can create design policies that either the leader or the identify side from HR has to comply with before a particular user gains access into our environment or into a particular service within our environment.

We use Entra's Conditional Access feature in conjunction with Microsoft Endpoint Manager. We do so because one part allows for full control in the endpoint for managing access on the user and that user as an object, and then the other manages the device as an object.

This combination has the ability to reduce the risk of unpatched devices connecting to your corporate network. It will prevent a user from accessing an environment or a service space via a compromised device. If a user, for example, tries to access our network, service, or environment, via a compromised personal device, this combination will help prevent that kind of intrusion. Also, if a corporate authorized device gets compromised, that's when we find out the device is authorized to access that environment. It also helps to manage and restrict access.

Entra has helped our IT administrators and HR department save time. As a rough estimate, I would say it has cut our costs down by 20 hours per week.

Microsoft Entra has affected our employee user experience by helping to manage the end-to-end communication between user, device, and services by creating a very similar communication and very similar to the experience, which allows the user to be able to connect seamlessly to services and also to the device itself.

We use Azure AD to implement Conditional Access policies and privileged access management.

There are plenty of benefits. First, as we had Microsoft AD on-premises, it was very easy to configure Azure AD. We are using the password hash sync for authentication, so authentication on the cloud is very seamless when users use applications on the cloud. That is very important.

Also, with the help of sign-in logs, we are getting information about every application, such as where a user is trying to log in and from which device, making things very crystal clear. We only get this type of transparency and accuracy only from Azure AD.

We use the Conditional Access feature to fine-tune access. We implement a lot of access policies. For example, we want to get rid of client machines with Windows XP and some legacy applications, so we created access policies to prevent logins from those devices and those applications. We have also created policies to prevent logins from certain areas around the world. These abilities are very helpful in preventing phishing and scams.

In addition, there are so many tasks and activities that are automated in Azure AD. For example, we have enabled the password reset self-service so that users can reset a password themselves and log in to their accounts. That is one way it saves time for our help desk team. It no longer requires the help desk. From an administrative perspective, it's very convenient for us to manage and maintain the users of the organization. Azure AD is saving us 10 to 12 hours per week, and that's for just one person who would otherwise be responsible for resetting passwords.

The solution has also prevented so many potential cyber attacks, and that has saved us money. And by saving man-hours, we have saved money. Thirdly, we have been able to reduce manpower. I would estimate it has saved us 20 percent in terms of costs.

Another benefit is that, from a user perspective, it is very smooth and easy to sign in to all the Microsoft applications with the Azure AD sign-in. The UI is very intuitive for Microsoft accounts, so it's very easy for them to log in. We also have single sign-on enabled for desktops, so whenever a user signs in to an application on their machine, they don't need to sign in again and again. With the help of the same token, all other applications can be opened easily.

Two very important features in terms of security are governance and compliance through the Conditional Access policies and Azure Log Analytics.

Also, Azure AD provides a single pane of glass for managing user access.

I mainly work with the Microsoft Security portal so I can get access and privileges to maintain all the security policies, including Conditional Access policies and privilege access management for just-in-time access, as well as Azure AD sign-in logs. These factors are very important.

When it comes to managing identity, we have E5 licenses. We are using every application from Office 365, so it is very easy for us to manage identity with the help of all those applications. We are also using third-party applications that are integrated with Azure AD and that makes access management easy.

From an admin perspective, I would like to see improvement in the Microsoft Graph API.

I have been using Azure Active Directory for six to seven years.

There are some bugs that we find monthly or quarterly, but all the bugs are fixed by Microsoft.

It is scalable.

We have it deployed in Europe and there are about 15,000 users.

I received good technical support when syncing on-premises users to Azure AD. It was very smooth. But for help with Conditional Access, I got poor support.

Neutral

We had on-premises AD and then we introduced Azure AD. We synced all the users from on-premises to Azure AD. Then, with Office 365, we installed Exchange Online and Teams. For single sign-on we have ADFS [Active Directory Federation Services] on-premises, but now we are migrating our applications to Azure AD SSO for single sign-on.

The initial deployment was very straightforward. It only took a day to deploy. The plan was first to get information about our on-premises Active Directory users, computers, and groups, and then we had to determine how many licenses and which types of licenses we needed for those. We also had to think about which type of authentication method we were going to use.

Our deployment involved three to four people.

Maintenance is just checking for updates.

Personally, I feel Microsoft is very costly compared to other products. That is also what management is thinking. But when we consider security and support, Microsoft is better than any other product. It is somehow justified, but I feel it is costly.

I have worked with Okta but for single sign-on only. It does not provide all the features or meet all our demands.

If you want secure data and secure identities, go for Microsoft Azure AD.

The primary use case is as an authentication mechanism or platform for the ISV solution that we offer our customers. When they are authenticating to our application, Azure AD is the solution on the backend the customers are actually using.

I'm a software developer so I write a bunch of integrations between applications and one of them is Azure AD. Our organization itself uses Azure AD for our external solution, which we provide as the authentication mechanism.

The most valuable feature is the authentication platform. Whether that's for users authenticating to applications or for actual applications that we write, authenticating to Microsoft or other applications. We can do app registrations where we're doing client-side or client credential flow authentication from an external app to a hosted Microsoft app or whatever other app within the Microsoft catalog we want to connect to. The focus area has been around being able to integrate and connect to different Microsoft resources using Azure AD to actually provide the authentication piece.

There are a lot of areas where the data from a reporting standpoint is extremely granular. It is great that you're able to get to that data at the same time unless you actually are hands-on with the tool, as it can sometimes be overwhelming to actually be able to decipher what that means. So if you're looking at audit reports or another sort of logging, the amount of information is never the problem within Azure AD, it's trying to distill it down to the information that you want. I think the solution can improve by making the consumption of that data easier for the customers.

I've been working with the solution for five or six years at least. Probably longer. 

The stability is very good. I think it's gone down only a couple of times and when it goes down, there are bigger problems than just us. From my perspective, it is fairly stable.

I think the ease at which you can create new resources and the like from an overarching Azure perspective is phenomenal. I believe Azure AD is scalable. There are some pieces of it that are difficult to use. When assigning layered groups or layered roles to users, trying to figure out the access that a user has can sometimes be a little tricky. But overall I think it follows the Azure model, so it's easy to deploy new pieces as needed.

We have a little over a hundred total users. Azure AD is only accessed by a couple of people within our organization, and they're all based out of our home office in the US. The authentication mechanism is used around the world. We have offices around the US and in Europe that all sign in using Azure AD as the authentication piece. We have 250-ish groups and just over a hundred users.

Previously we used on-prem ADFS. At our organization, we integrate with a whole host of different identity providers; Ping, Okta, and those types, but we've always used a Microsoft product internally for our user setup and access. We switched to Azure AD because our product is also hosted within Azure. As part of that, we actually also switched to a hybrid cloud where we run both on-prem AD and Azure AD online.

There were a couple of hiccups along the way, but the initial setup was fairly straightforward.

The biggest issue for us was getting the sync working from on-prem to the cloud. That was the hardest part. As far as the deployment itself, we went and created an Azure tenant and then created the Azure AD or a portion of it. After that, setting up the sync was really the biggest part.

The implementation was completed in-house, and we integrate it from our product perspective.

Azure AD makes our work a lot easier, but I don't have an actual number to show an ROI.

We're a Microsoft shop, so it basically was the only option that we really had if we wanted to use Azure. Our services host Azure so it made sense for us to use Azure AD.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We actually integrate with Microsoft Entra and are able to add additional functionality to it. Entra does everything down to the entitlement level within applications, whereas our organization would go a little bit further and go to the object level. But from an overall user access perspective within our cloud environment, Microsoft Entra does give us visibility into what that user's assigned, based on their roles and group access.

We don't use Microsoft Entra in the way that most other companies are going to use it. We're looking at it from a strategic perspective for the security reporting application that we provide our customers. When a customer of ours would be using Microsoft Entra and they want to extend it to provide additional reporting or to actually go down and assign functions at the object level within their applications, they would use our organization to do that. I don't technically use Microsoft Entra to actually view what our users are looking at from a user access perspective.

I don't know if we use it internally at our organization, but in the majority of cases, the clients want to be able to have a place where they can do enterprise-wide identity management. And so that's what they are trying to get to with Entra. That's a question that a lot of our customers have across the board. The functionality that Entra provides is the ability to span across different either business applications or other third-party applications. The customer then has to be able to do identity-based access control from a single-pane-of-glass within our Azure AD instance.

I don't do the actual assignment within our organization from an Azure AD perspective. We extend what Microsoft Entra provides, from a feature functionality perspective. We have a separate IT team that would actually do the user creation and access assignment within Azure AD and I don't know if they use Microsoft Entra to manage all identity and access tasks within the organization.

We're a Microsoft ISV and we connect with a number of different ERP, CRM, and HDM-type systems, but we do security on compliance reporting and functionality.

We integrate with the solution. Customers that are using Entra, would or could use our organization when they need that extra level of detail. We use it for development purposes to actually create a working solution. We support that as far as when we do our reporting from our organizational perspective. I don't use Entra internally at our organization, so we integrate with it from a coding perspective. As far as features and functionality go, we integrate with it and we support it. 

We run the solution on-prem and then we sync that to Azure AD in the cloud, but it's on a normal public cloud, overall.

I think Azure AD is a no-brainer if you're a Microsoft shop and if you have other Microsoft products already. It boils down to what sort of office you're looking for. Being a development shop, it absolutely made sense to us to use Azure AD because we were already using Azure, so it could be included with that offering. If you're not a technical shop then I think you should have to look to see if it's something that you are going to manage, and how many other applications you manage within your organization from an access perspective. If you're doing that across 25, 50, or 100 different applications, then Azure AD is a great choice. If you don't really sign into too many things, then there may be more cost-effective ways out there. It depends on what your use case is.

I use it to access my work applications. When I install Microsoft Teams or Outlook, or I want to access my work applications, I authenticate myself using Microsoft Authenticator.

During the pandemic, one of the challenges for organizations was how to secure their IT networks. People were working remotely, and some of them were working from the remotest locations. It gave confidence to the organization that only the right person was getting access to work applications.

It also improves your customer experience or employee experience. You don't have to rely much on servers. 

Being able to easily authenticate yourself on the MSA app is valuable. It is easy to use. Rather than receiving a code in an SMS, you can just verify that it is you. You don't have to punch in any password or any six-digit code. That's the feature that I like the most.

It does give you the confidence that no one else can access your details or can have access to your account because it does add a second layer of security. Even if someone hacks the server where my details are stored, unless and until I authenticate myself on MSA, even hackers won't be able to get into my account.

It works absolutely fine from the login perspective. You can also configure it on third-party devices, and it works pretty well. I haven't faced any issues from the login point of view.

They can improve how people manage their accounts. They can simplify and provide more information about adding or updating a phone number or email id in the MSA account. A lot of time users do get confused about where to go. For example, if I've changed my mobile number, where do I go and change my mobile number in the MSA account? A lot of time, employees think if they change the phone number in the HR database, it'll automatically get changed on the MSA account, which is not the case. Microsoft can simplify that and add these questions in the FAQ documents as well. They can provide more clarity about how it is different from your organization's database.

Voice recognition could be added going forward. With a smartphone, such as iPhone, as well as with Windows Hello for business, you already have facial recognition. Voice recognition is something that could be added going forward, especially for people with special needs.

I have been using it for a year.

It is quite stable. Coming from Microsoft, you don't question the stability factor at all. I have Microsoft Authenticator installed on my phone, and even when I switched organizations, I could simply add my new workplace email id, and it worked absolutely fine. It is quite stable, and it gives you a good user experience.

Scalability-wise, it is quite good. We were rolling it out to 150,000 people across the globe and different geographies. One of the good things is that Microsoft doesn't need any introduction anywhere. In terms of user experience, it is right up there. It is also right up there in terms of how different work applications align with it. I would rate it quite high.

Technical support was good. We didn't have to rely on Microsoft's technical support big time because the solution worked very well overall. We had our third-party technical support team involved as well.

Positive

Before Microsoft Authenticator, we used Okta Multi-Factor, and prior to Okta, we were totally relying on passwords, which was obviously very risky. 

We switched to Microsoft Authenticator because when you implement the whole Microsoft 365 suite, especially in a large organization, all the work applications sync pretty well with Microsoft, and you already have a good relationship with the vendor. 

It was initially on-prem, but later on, we shifted it to the cloud. When I joined the organization, it was already on-prem, and I helped to shift all the data from on-prem to Azure cloud. The process was a little complex. We had a few on-prem issues, and we had to redo the capability testing to check if those issues will arise on the Azure Cloud as well. It was complex because we were again asking some of the users who had changed their phone numbers to go and re-add their phone numbers. If they had the same phone number, it would have worked fine, but if they had changed the phone number, once it is shifted from on-prem to Azure Cloud, it wouldn’t have worked anymore. So, they had to re-add their phone number. The challenge was to identify those users and convince them to redo the activity. This switchover took about two quarters or six months.

We had a team of about 7 to 10 people from project management, change management, IT, and global IT teams. We are a massive organization. It was being rolled out to 150,000 people across the globe.

We did pilot testing across different functions and across different geographies. That's the standard practice that we follow in our organization.

We have seen an ROI. We were able to secure our IT networks by more than 80%. More than 80% of the audience did subscribe to MSA and used it for logging into their work accounts.

It took us two to three months to realize its benefits from the time of deployment. We did run a pilot batch. We were trying to customize the solution according to our network. Within a quarter, we were able to identify its benefits.

I'm not totally aware of the pricing and licensing, but I do know that the pricing and licensing must be quite balanced. We are a pretty old client of Microsoft, and MSA is just one of the services we use from Microsoft. There's a whole Microsoft 365 suite that's implemented as well. I'm sure it is something that is acceptable to both parties.

We were totally relying on Microsoft. We didn't evaluate any other vendor.

To those looking to evaluate this solution, I would advise doing proper pilot testing to iron out any hurdles later on. It is important to take a call on whether you want to adopt the on-prem model or the cloud model. Obviously, the on-prem model is not sustainable if you're trying to secure your IT networks. The cloud model is more sustainable in that sense. I would advise taking that call right in the beginning.

I would also advise considering how to secure third-party devices. There might be third-party contractors who don't have the company laptops, but they do have company email ids to log into the company accounts from their own devices. You should work out how you are going to add those devices to the secure cloud.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. In the next version, if they can come up with voice recognition, especially for people with special needs, it will be helpful.

I started using Azure in my organization for user management, identity management, and app security.

I am using purely Azure Active Directory, but I've used Azure Active Directory in a hybrid scenario. I sync my user from on-premises Active Directory to cloud. While I have used the solution in both scenarios, I use it mostly for purely ATS cloud situations.

We don't really have breaches anymore. Now, in most cases, we set up a sign-in policy for risky things, like a user signing in via VPN or they can't sign in based on their location. This security aspect is cool.

If a user wants to sign onto the company's account, but turn on their VPN at the same time, they might not be able to sign in because of the Conditional Access policy set up in place for them. This means their location is different from the trusted site and trusted location. Therefore, they would not be able to sign in. While they might not like it, this is for the security of the organization and its products.

The cloud security part is very valuable. Security is the most important thing in today's world. With Azure Active Directory, there are some features that tell you how you need to improve your security level. It informs you if you set up certain policies, e.g., this is where my users sign in. It tends to let you know if your organization has been breached with this security set up. Therefore, it is easier to know when you have been breached, especially if you set up a Conditional Access policy for your organization.

The authentication, the SSO and MFA, are cool. 

It has easy integration with on-premises applications using the cloud. This was useful in my previous hybrid environment. 

The user management and application management are okay.

There are some features, where if you want to access them, then you need to make use of PowerShell. If someone is not really versed in PowerShell scripting, then they would definitely have issues using some of those features in Azure Active Directory. 

I have been using Azure AD for three years.

Overall, stability is okay. Although, sometimes with the cloud, we have had downtime. In some instances, Microsoft is trying, when it comes to Azure AD, to mitigate any issues as soon as possible. I give them that. They don't have downtime for a long time.

You can extend it as much as you need. For example, you can create as many users as you want on the cloud if you sync your users from on-premises. Therefore, it is highly scalable.

I used to manage about 1,500 users in the cloud. Also, at times, I have worked with organizations who have up to 25,000 users. When it comes to scalability, it is actually okay. Based on your business requirements, small businesses can use Azure Active Directory with no extra cost as well as an organization with more than 10,000 users.

The support is okay, but it is actually different based on your specific issue because they have different teams. For example, when you have issues with cloud identity management, I think those are being handled by Microsoft 365 support, and if you have an issue with your Azure services, the Azure team handles it. 

I can say the support from Microsoft 365 support is awesome because it is free support. Although the experience is not all that awesome every time, and there is no perfect system, when compared to other supports, I would rate them as 10 (out of 10).

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. When I set up Azure Active Directory, I just had to create an Office 365 tenant.

Creating an Office 365 tenant automatically creates an Azure Active Directory organization for you. For example, if I create my user in Microsoft 365 automatically, I see them in Azure Active Directory. I just need to go to Azure Active Directory, set up my policies, and whatever I want to do based on the documentation.

A part of the documentation is actually complex. You need to read it multiple times and reference a lot of links before you can grasp how it works and what you need to do.

The very first time, it took me awhile to set up. However, when setting it up the second time, having to create Azure AD without setting up users was less than three minutes.

I work with a client who has a small organization of 50 users worldwide. With Active Directory, they are spending a lot for 50 users for management, the cost of maintenance, etc. The ROI number is too small for the costs that they are spending on the maintenance of an on-premises setup. So, I migrated them to Azure Active Directory, where it is cost-effective compared to an on-premises setup.

For you to make use of some of the security features, you need to upgrade your licenses. If it is possible, could they just make some features free? For instance, for the Condition Access policy, you need to set that up and be on Azure AD P2 licensing. So if they could make it free or reduce the licensing for small businesses, that would be cool, as I believe security is for everyone.

The product is very good. Sometimes, I try to use Google Workspace, but I still prefer Azure to that solution. I prefer the Azure user interface versus the Google Workspace interface.

Draw out a plan. Know what you want and your requirements. Microsoft has most things in place. If you have an existing setup or MFA agreement with Okta and other services, you can still make use of them at the same time while you are using Azure Active Directory. Just know your requirements, then look for any possible way to integrate what you have with your requirements.

Overall, this solution is okay.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of 10.

We primarily use the solution for our AD. Azure AD and Microsoft Entra ID are basically the same, they are currently rebranding. I basically manage users and permissions.

It's made it easy to manage our users. It's also easy to deploy across the company. It pulls over the Exchange and does everything together in one go. You just have to get the licenses.

The login process is easy. It's very user-friendly for users. We can check the logins and handle user management. It's quite simple and easy to use.

It provides a single pane of glass for managing users and access. It's easy for users to handle multiple devices. It makes the sign-on experience better. It can easily teach users how to use the authenticator app.

I'm able to get reports on the database to help give visibility to security. I don't handle security, however. I'm there for support. People can use the data to perform investigations. 

The ID is quite useful. The Azure ID admin center can manage all identity access tasks across an organization. We can easily set up users. It's something you need in every company. Most of the basic stuff is done for users.

The Verified ID is useful for authentication. You can set it in your privacy settings. 

The solution has helped us save time.

The experience overall has been good for employees when they need to get an ID. If you need an extra license, it's just a matter of clicking one button.

We'd like to be able to link to non-Mircosft products, like Linux. There isn't much open source that links up with Azure. Most open source, however, can link up with AWS.

I've been using the solution for four years now. 

The solution is stable. it's dependable. 

We have about 100 users on the solution. 

It's easy to scale up or down. It does what it needs to do. You can always edit or delete resources as well. 

We haven't had any issues. Therefore, I have not really dealt with technical support. 

Positive

I was also working with Microsoft Active Directory on-prem. I'm new to this company; I've worked with other things in other companies before. 

I've used Okta in the past. I find the Azure pricing more user-friendly and I find it's better in terms fo team collaboration. For example, with this, you can also implement Microsoft Defender which can help you monitor users as well.

We have it deployed to the cloud; it's too expensive to maintain on-prem hardware. 

I was not directly involved in the deployment of the solution. 

Only two people have to maintain the product. 

The pricing is expensive. It's in US dollars. I'd rate the affordability of pricing six out of ten. 

I'm not sure if the company evaluated other options. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. My advice would be to stay virtual and not on-prem or you'll have to pay more.

We use Microsoft Entra ID primarily to reconnect all of our Windows laptops. It is our centralized location for access to pretty much anything web-related. Everything you log in is MFA activated. We've worked on conditional access policies in it as well.

Microsoft Entra ID has improved our organization because we now utilize a single source of truth for authentication. We have less management, and I can point everything to Microsoft Entra ID. I have fewer people talking about resetting passwords, the MFA pieces, and more single sign-on.

I'm not attaching or having to authenticate on separate apps, which has greatly benefited us. We are able to route things into Microsoft Entra ID. I create one ID, I create groups that manage the security side of it, we plug that in, and it works great.

The most valuable features of Microsoft Entra ID are the login and the conditional access pieces. The login helps me identify who went where, why, and what problems they may have encountered. The conditional access allows me to control the flow of user access.

The private access is the next big thing for us, and that's one feature I'm going to try in public preview and probably move towards. There is no great solution in the cloud for Conditional Access authentication and RADIUS-type authentication.

I have been using Microsoft Entra ID for four years.

The solution's stability is very good. We've only had one minor outage for a few hours.

The solution's scalability is really good.

The solution's initial setup is fairly straightforward. The biggest issues we had were syncing it to the on-premises Active Directory and doing local things like RADIUS.

We implemented the solution with the help of a consultant named Steeves and Associates, and our experience with them was really good.

We have seen a return on investment with Microsoft Entra ID. The solution has dramatically reduced the amount of time spent on activating accounts. I was the first system administrator at the company, and we've got four now. It's definitely a growing arena, but it's an understanding that I can see that progression. I don't have to teach them all these different things. We just do one thing and move on.

Everything costs money in a tough market. As a nonprofit, we have A5 licenses for nonprofits in education, so we at least have some reduced costs. Looking at Copilot and a bunch of other features that are coming out, we'll have to seriously consider that cost-to-value ratio.

Since we all use Windows laptops, choosing Microsoft Entra ID made sense. I think there's a cohesivity in what Microsoft is trying to do, and Microsoft Entra ID is a very core function of that strategy. It's easier to branch out to other security products, making it easier for us to expand that landscape.

Microsoft Entra provides a single pane of glass for managing user access.

Because of the solution's single pane of glass, we don't have to run around to multiple places, mainly to create or remove accounts. One of our biggest issues, especially in the past few years, is turnover. Removing accounts is a big issue because we don't know where everything lies. Trying to find those little corners where access has been granted and not knowing it for a year or two after the employee has left is a huge security concern for us.

Our HR department doesn't use Microsoft Entra ID yet, but the IT department extensively uses it. It saves all that account creation, and we don't have to run around to different products. The solution has saved our company at least a few hours a week. We can focus on other projects, and I can educate most of my staff who are doing it in other areas.

Microsoft Entra ID has not necessarily helped our organization to save money. As a nonprofit, we didn't have any solutions, so it probably started costing us more. However, I think it's paid off just by this security nature of things and having that single pane of glass.

Overall, I rate Microsoft Entra ID ten out of ten.

We manage local users in the Microsoft Entra ID environment. 

The tool's most valuable features are security and integration with other tenants. 

The product takes at least ten minutes to activate privilege identity management roles. 

I have been using the product for two years. 

The tool's stability is good. 

Microsoft Entra ID's support is good. 

The tool's deployment is easy. However, documentation is not helpful. 

The product is cheap. It is free for our tenant. 

I rate the product a seven out of ten. 

We used Azure AD for a role-based customer access mechanism. We implemented a single tenant, single sign-on for users of the application. We gave them a sign-on feature with OpenID Connect.

Previously we had to manually create the authentication server, but when we used Azure AD, we got the server directly from Azure. I didn't have to design the server.

We were also able to filter on the domain for the client I was working for.

In addition, we used Azure AD's Conditional Access feature to enforce fine-tuned and adaptive access controls. That was pretty useful because we didn't have to do much because we had attributes like authorized tags. And we configured scope, meaning who can access what, in the manifest. It was not very complicated.

And Azure ID has definitely helped save us time. Earlier, we had to depend on the infrastructure team, a different team, to manage the Active Directory permissions. But now, most of the time, the developers have access in the portal. It is saving us about 40 percent of our time.

The most valuable features of Azure ID are the single sign-on and OpenID Connect authentication.

Also, it was very nice that the documentation, the articles and help, on how to implement what we were trying to do, were available freely on the site, making it easy to develop. We did two or three sprints because things worked. Most of the time was spent on development and testing. But the deployment was easy.

Maybe I don't have enough experience, but when you fix the rules and permissions, working directly on the manifest, you really need to have in-depth knowledge. If there were a graphical user interface to update the manifest, that would be good. For example, if I want to grant access to HR versus an admin, I have to specifically write that in the manifest file to create the various roles. That means I'm coding in the manifest file. A graphical user interface would really help.

I have been using Azure AD for two-plus years.

The stability is 95 percent. We don't have any issues with it.

Of course it's scalable and that's why we choose the platform. We only have two regions in the load balancer. We have not gone beyond that, so we have not faced an issue.

We deployed it in multiple locations for our customer.

We haven't contacted Microsoft support.

I have played a small role in deploying Azure AD, but I have not been involved in the migration process. Overall, the deployment is easy. It took us 20 to 25 days, including fixing issues. That was normal, nothing unusual.

Regarding maintenance, the team I'm on does application maintenance. For Azure, we have a cloud admin who looks at the Azure portal for things like billing, access management, and admin work.

Some people use SAML technology for single sign-on. Although I haven't used it, it seems a bit complex. I started working directly with Azure AD OpenID Connect to a single tenant, or Azure AD B2B or B2C, and it was very smooth. It was not much of a challenge. Most of the complex things are taken care of by the Azure AD login. Usually, you don't need to do a deep dive into what is happening internally. 

Microsoft is like a "hovercraft", as opposed to scuba diving. With Microsoft, you can use the "hovercraft". Without touching the river you can cross it.

I have not explored many other competitive products, like GCP or AWS. I am a supporter of Microsoft products.

With Verified ID, things were secure. In recent news, there has been some hacking due to some developer using an email ID as opposed to OpenID, but our team did not use email IDs. Even if we were using email IDs for single sign-on, the user still needed to sign up with a password, so it was not possible to impersonate someone else.

The user experience, the interface, is very smooth. We have never had any problems with the single sign-on.

When applications are hosted on Azure, you should use the advantages of Azure AD.