Microsoft Entra ID Reviews

Microsoft Entra ID is used to control access to our environment.

Microsoft Entra ID has been most beneficial in the realm of IT management, although not significantly impactful on user experience. Microsoft Entra ID is not solely for user management or enhancing user experience. Rather, it greatly aids in constructing operational processes for IT management, as its capabilities extend far beyond user and access management. In terms of refining user experience, it certainly contributes to areas like authentication, particularly in diverse authentication methods and device-based authentication. 

The best thing about Microsoft Entra ID is the ease of setup.

If we're highly experienced or dealing with intricate scenarios, Microsoft Entra ID might not be the most suitable solution. In my opinion, it resolves the majority of cases, but it lacks comprehensive management tools for access control. I don't consider it the premier tool for user or identity management. While it covers many aspects, we'll need supplementary tools to effectively manage access rules. This deficiency is quite significant. To make it viable for a large organization, substantial additional development is necessary.

Microsoft Entra ID provides a way to manage user access, but it's not an effective tool for access management due to its excessive complexity. This is primarily because the process needs to be performed manually. Therefore, it lacks a user-friendly interface where we could define all access rules and scenarios comprehensively.

Zero trust is not easy to set up, especially for large organizations. While it could be implemented for smaller organizations, the extensive manual configuration required makes it impractical for larger enterprises.

Microsoft Entra ID's impact on access and identity management is relatively limited.

The single interface for managing permissions, permission rules, or conditional access policies needs to be significantly more user-friendly. While it remains functional for IT departments, it is not particularly user-friendly for end users. There is considerable room for improvement in this regard.

Microsoft Entra ID offers various features, but its setup and utilization are quite complex due to the lack of a user-friendly interface for end users. Unless we allocate a significant budget and a substantial workforce to configure it for end users, making it usable remains a challenge. Moreover, even with these investments, the cost of using Microsoft Entra ID would become prohibitively high. Thus, it's evident that the platform lacks the necessary functionality to provide a satisfactory end-user experience. 

I have been using Microsoft Entra ID for eight years.

The solution is stable. I have not encountered any stability issues.

Microsoft Entra ID is scalable.

I have had a positive experience with technical support. Additionally, if we opt for premium support or possess varying levels of support agreements with Microsoft, we can access excellent support.

The deployment is quite straightforward. It's truly uncomplicated from an IT perspective to utilize Microsoft Entra ID. It's not overly intricate in that aspect. However, when we delve into end-user scenarios, and the management and configuration of conditional access policies, permission management, and other similar aspects, it does introduce a certain level of complexity, naturally.

Microsoft Entra ID service can be quite costly due to its hidden expenses linked to usage. This cost ambiguity arises from our inability to accurately project expenses prior to implementation, contingent upon the specific features employed. The expense is particularly notable if we intend to utilize it for comprehensive identity management. Nevertheless, alternative budget-friendly identity management solutions are limited within the current market landscape.

There are no additional costs for maintenance because most of the parts are cloud-based and managed by Microsoft. This means we can't manage it ourselves. However, if we had a private cloud with Microsoft Entra ID, for instance, then we could manage our entire cloud ourselves. This would allow us to have good control of the costs. But there are many small components in Microsoft Entra ID. So, when we are planning to build something with Microsoft Entra ID, we might struggle to understand the total cost for the users. It's difficult to comprehend all the necessary pieces we need to purchase to construct a scenario. Only after we have designed this solution, we will be able to see the complete cost. Unfortunately, there are numerous hidden costs in Microsoft Entra ID that I am not particularly fond of.

If we consider the top three or four management tools, they offer numerous out-of-the-box features for connecting to HR sources. Furthermore, we have a straightforward method for establishing access policies based on our HR data. In my opinion, competitors hold an advantage over Microsoft Entra ID.

I would rate Microsoft Entra ID eight out of ten.

We can achieve a great deal with conditional access policies; however, using the interface itself is quite cumbersome and not very user-friendly. Consequently, there are very few tools currently available that offer a well-designed user interface for managing access policies. This is consistently a highly intricate scenario.

Based on my experience, Okta functions primarily as a solution for managing customer access or customer identity, rather than being the conventional method for handling business or corporate identities. It's more focused on robustly managing customer identities. However, in my previous procurement roles, it has never been selected as the primary option. This could be due to my limited exposure to customer identity management. Thus, I find it challenging to draw a direct comparison. On the other hand, Microsoft Azure Active Directory can certainly serve as a customer identity management solution and is comparable in this aspect. However, the comparison doesn't hold true for user identity management.

The maintenance is controlled by Microsoft because the solution is on their cloud.

Organizations should refrain from exclusively using Microsoft Entra ID for all identity and access management scenarios. This is because relying solely on Microsoft Entra ID necessitates creating additional components ourselves to address aspects that cannot be readily addressed using the default Microsoft Entra ID setup. We are required to construct these components and establish phases for end users, as Microsoft Entra ID does not encompass all these functionalities. A more effective approach could involve integrating Microsoft Entra ID with another product, such as SailPoint. This combined utilization would likely result in a robust identity management solution. It's important to recognize that Microsoft Entra ID alone cannot adequately address all our scenarios.

We use the solution for single sign-on, provisioning, de-provisioning, conditional access, and identity governance.

The access governess feature improves our compliance.

Privilege Identity Management is the most valuable feature.

The licensing and support are expensive and have room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for five years.

I give the stability a nine out of ten.

I give the scalability a nine out of ten.

The support is really good.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. The time required for deployment will vary depending on the features that we plan to use. Typically, two to three weeks should be sufficient for deployment.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have seen a return on investment.

I give the cost a three out of ten. The licensing is expensive.

We evaluated Google Cloud Identity.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Two to three engineers are required for the Maintenance. The majority of the maintenance is completed by Microsoft.

I recommend the solution to others.

We deployed the solution across multiple geographical areas.

We use Azure AD which enables our customers to remotely access the shared machines within their office, allowing them to work from any location.

Our primary customer transitioned from using a local cluster to utilizing Azure. They initially utilized Hyper-V and have now combined Azure AD with SharePoint Office 365. This new setup has proven to be much more convenient for them compared to their previous local arrangement, which did not work well. With Azure AD, I was able to exert greater control over the content on their machine.

Azure AD saved time for our IT administrators and HR departments, particularly when they need to reset their own passwords or grant permissions to other people within the group by themselves. This saved around 60 hours in total.

Azure AD helped save around 18,000 euros.

Azure AD significantly improved the employee user experience in the company by providing them with enhanced accessibility to their information and facilitating seamless login and logout from their machines while working from home. This is a significant shift from the previous system that relied on a local username and VPN connection and was limited to a fixed cluster.

The most valuable feature is the ease with which a person can log in remotely using only a password or pin without creating a profile or policy.

The permission management is a mess because it is not centralized, especially when we go back from Azure, which is quite big to SharePoint. This is not really well done and has room for improvement.

I would appreciate it if Azure AD could provide an option to simplify its interface by removing unnecessary features for small companies with a maximum of 50 users. This would make it more user-friendly for our customers who find the current interface overwhelming due to its numerous options.

I have been using the solution for almost 12 years.

Azure AD is a stable solution.

Although Azure AD is intended to be scalable, we have not yet verified its scalability by adding more users.

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment required around six hours. I only had to import to write the existing users into Azure.

The implementation was completed in-house.

The solution can be cheaper.

I evaluated Google Workspace but I prefer Microsoft.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

The only maintenance required for Azure AD is to modify certain parts on Windows by using policies.

The usefulness of Azure AD depends on several factors such as our intended use, the current system, the number of users, and organizational size. While Azure AD is an excellent choice for larger companies, it may not be beneficial for individuals.

The solution acted as a source of truth for everyone internally and those we collaborated with externally. We deployed it in the cloud, so many of our users are remote and spread across the country.

The features around permissions are excellent.

The general usability of the site could be improved.

The ease of use regarding finding audit information for users could also be improved.

We want to see better integration with other Microsoft 365 products; it's a separate tool, but they all need to work together.

We've been using Azure Active Directory for about four years. 

The product is very stable; I rate it nine out of ten for stability.

Azure AD is very scalable; I rate it nine out of ten for scalability. 

The customer service needs improvement; it takes a long time to open a ticket and get it resolved.

Neutral

We previously used Google G Suite and switched to Azure AD for better security, and to match the platform our clients are using to allow easier collaboration with them.

The initial deployment was straightforward, although we initially found it challenging to understand how to use Azure AD to manage access and permissions with external parties. We carried out the setup using three staff; myself and the IT team.

We have seen an ROI with the solution; the ability to collaborate with external partners provided tremendous value. 

I evaluated Okta some years ago, so that information isn't fresh. 

I rate the product nine out of ten, and I recommend it. 

The primary use cases are task tracking and technical documentation, but I'm a project manager, so I also use the product for other jobs.

We have around 15 total users, with a couple of admins.

The boards for task tracking are a valuable feature. 

Azure AD is a turnkey solution; it provides many features for developers to use in one place.

Many of the features are outdated, so the UI and UX could be improved. 

The wiki is hard to use as it's more of a repository for technical information, but when I'm writing a PRD, I need more tools for writing. 

It would be good if the UI were more visually appealing, as it looks dated compared to other products on the market. It works fine for the dev team, but the navigation could be improved, especially for managers.

I've been using the solution for around two years. 

The stability is okay overall. 

The product is highly scalable; it's enormous and has many features.

I previously used a variety of solutions for task management, including Asana, Teamwork from Microsoft, Jira, and so on. 

I wasn't involved in the deployment; the solution was already in place when I arrived. It doesn't require any maintenance that I'm aware of. 

The product is relatively affordable, especially compared to Okta, a pricey solution.

Azure AD helped save my organization money, as it's a turnkey solution for dev management, though I can't say precisely how much as I'm not involved in the financial side.  

I rate the solution six out of ten. 

I don't use Azure AD's Verified ID, but I'm considering an identity management solution. I'm hesitant about which one to choose, and the choice is between a product from Okta and the one from Azure AD.

I use the Permission Management feature, which I look for when choosing an identity management product, but I'm still in the research phase with this feature.

Most of our staff are okay with the quality of the end-user experience within our organization, but it could be more comfortable to use for managers. It's a challenging solution to implement for every department or team because not everyone likes the UX, and it's pretty outdated when it comes to product document writing. I had an unpleasant experience when we had a power cut, and I lost two pages of documentation, as there is no autosave feature. This is important from a manager's perspective but less so for developers.

For those considering the solution, talk to your dev team to determine if it covers their needs. If so, use it, as it has many features and is very scalable.

The solution strengthened our security posture by providing fine-grained access based on attributes, standardized names, and values. Azure AD reduced our time to market for products based on improved security.

The product also improved our service desk overhead.

Azure AD positively affected our end-user experience via reduced time to market, being an identity product for our workforce.

Privileged Identity Management (PIM), managed identities, dynamic groups, and extension and security attributes are all great features.

Better integration with external governance products would be a welcome addition to Azure AD. 

We've been using the solution for four years.

The solution is stable but can be improved, especially regarding response times.

Azure AD is a cloud-based solution operating from a worldwide tenant, so scalability isn't an issue, especially from an identity perspective. We have 300,000 total end users. 

We have yet to interact with technical support, so I can't speak to that.

We previously used standard AD. 

The setup is mixed; the startup is fast, but configuring requires the knowledge of a consultant or technical resource. Basic deployment can be completed in a day, but our greenfield deployment took a relatively long time as we're a large organization. A greenfield deployment should take at most two weeks, but implementing Azure AD into a functional environment is a project unto itself. It could take months, depending on the use cases.

Regarding maintenance, we're a global organization, and each feature has its own operating team. At our scale, a group of 25 is responsible for managing and maintaining the identity part of the solution.

The pricing depends on the use case and can be negotiated based on volume. 

I rate the solution eight out of ten. 

My advice to others evaluating the product is to do good due diligence beforehand to determine a clear set of requirements, as with any identity tool or access management solution.  

We are a Microsoft-oriented company. All our main infrastructure for user systems and productivity, like Microsoft Office and email, are from Microsoft. So we use Microsoft products and we use Active Directory on-premises. We have also built a cloud infrastructure and we now have a completely hybrid architecture. As a result, it was mandatory to configure Azure Active Directory to synchronize with the on-premises Active Directory.

We have finished that project and now we use Azure Active Directory for users who are on the cloud.

Entra is very good for the organization because we now have many users, due to COVID, who are working from a distance. With Microsoft, we can give them the opportunity to download all the applications on their personal PCs, like Teams, OneDrive, et cetera. They have a single sign-on and they can log on from everywhere.

The solution has improved things a lot for our organization because it has improved productivity. One specific effect is that we used to use a lot of VPN access, but we have decreased that access by 80 percent because they don't need the VPN anymore. And productivity has also improved very much, because users can do their jobs from everywhere, even on their mobile phones, because they have their files on OneDrive. With Azure Active Directory, we don't have security issues thanks to the added security on the cloud, such as MFA and also Defender for Endpoint. 

But it's not only productivity tools that we have on Azure, we have other applications as well that we have set up for our users, like SAP. We have also diminished our telecom costs.

We have saved a lot of money, I'm very sure about that. We pay for the solution but because it is in the pricing agreement, we have more tools available and we don't have to buy more. I would estimate it has saved us more than 40 percent.

In addition, before, we had to work through all the horizontal firewalls and security sensors in the company. Now, we have separated the productivity tools like Word, Excel, OneDrive, and Teams. That means our users are very pleased with the user experience. They like using it. They can work from home or at the company and their files are synchronized. 

Overall, we feel our security has improved and we are confident.

I like the fact that I can manage the users, but it's also a security resource. Let's say we decide that our users need to have MFA - multi-factor authentication. It is very easy to implement that with Azure Active Directory.

What could be improved is the environment. It still has administration centers in Office 365, and the same is true for Azure in general. You can manage the users from the Office 365 administration center, and you can manage them from Azure Active Directory. Those are two different environments, but they do the same things. They can gather the features in one place, and it might be better if that place were Azure.

I have been using Azure Active Directory for five years.

The stability is very good. We don't have incidents. The only issues we had were to do with synchronization that took some time between Active Directory on-prem and Azure Active Directory. But that might have had something to do with other issues.

It is a 100-percent scalable solution and that is one of the reasons we chose it. 

We have installations on-premises, and people all over the country, including the islands, the north, and everywhere. Our users are in multiple locations. It's used across different departments with different applications and needs. At this moment, we have about 2,300 users.

Microsoft's technical support needs to be improved. It's a bit bureaucratic, to put it in one word.  The procedure for opening a case is that someone sends you an email to give them all they need. I would like the technical support proceedings to be faster. Sometimes, my company doesn't have this time. We need to find a solution very quickly. 

Neutral

We used on-premises products like System Center Configuration Manager. We used Microsoft's products, but for on-prem administration, not on the cloud.

Due to the fact that we have a hybrid architecture, not a clean cloud solution, it took us a lot of time. We had to consider how everything, all the applications, was going to work. Active Directory is also involved in emails and there were many procedures to consider and test. There were also many users who were staying on-prem. We also had to consider external cooperation with other European and domestic energy companies. So it took us about one year. Our company is not a simple company, like a sales company or a manufacturer. We deal with critical infrastructure and we have to control and operate the power for the whole country. We had to think about every step of the journey.

We had 10 to 12 people involved. I was the project manager and there were three groups of people, in addition. One was from telecom and security. There were a few people from infrastructure and technical support, and there were some people from the application side, to test that all our applications were active.

We also have teams for projects, like when we do a large construction for something like power lines. We form teams between departments and these special teams may work for a year on a specific project. We also needed to consider them because they have different needs and work from different places and are mobile.

Because we have on-premises firewalls in our company, we had to do some work before we implemented AAD to arrange access between the company's security system and the Microsoft cloud system so that they could cooperate and communicate. We had to open the protocols, et cetera. As a result, we don't have any problem with the consistency of our security policies.

In the beginning, it was a matter of getting used to the procedures. We needed to explain things to the users so we sent them a guide. We rolled it out to our 2,500 users in many batches over about four months.

There is periodical maintenance, such as upgrades, as well as ad hoc maintenance. For example, if we modify public folders, we need to do some work because, on one occasion, cloud users couldn't see a public folder that was on-premises.

We can see a return on the investment by comparing the prices we know from previous years. We don't use so many data centers now and we don't need as many installations and to pay as much rent.

Our return on investment is that the costs are very small, like one-tenth what they were, by going from owning on-premises data centers to what we have now. Over a period of five years, our return on investment is 100 percent. The money we pay for this contract is not much compared to the money you need for buildings, data centers, power, and technicians.

The price is also very good if you consider the money you save by not having to pay for many contracts with different companies to create a corporate solution. You pay one company, like Microsoft, and you have the whole solution. We have saved a lot of money by doing that. 

Of course, you need to give it time and in-house resources. People have to be trained. Otherwise, if you have many environments and many products that you don't know very well... 

Maybe using multiple companies is good. That's why we do use some other products, but not many.

The price is fair. It's not very expensive given what they offer. Of course, we did some negotiating with Microsoft. We didn't pay the list price. We have been a Microsoft customer for many years, so when the contract comes due every three years, we discuss it. Afterward, there are some discounts.

We evaluated Amazon and Google. We chose Microsoft mainly because it has the whole package, meaning it has the security, the applications, and the infrastructure, so it's a more holistic approach compared to the others. It's not that Google and Amazon don't offer something like that, but they need more time to improve because they were not on-premises companies.

Microsoft gives you the space, the data centers on the cloud, and backups; it gives you everything. From the others, something was always missing. Microsoft may not be perfect, but it has everything you need.

It's a very good solution, an excellent solution. It's very stable and robust. You don't need to do a proof of concept unless you have a special case, like, for example, fleet management, and have a very specialized application.

We use Entra’s Conditional Access feature but we also use other tools from other vendors. From our experience so far, we haven't had problems. Entra seems robust enough. We haven't even had one incident of malware. Of course, we have added some more tools to our cloud infrastructure for the mail applications in the network. So although it's robust enough, because we're handling critical infrastructure, as a company we decided to have more tools.

We use Intune and Endpoint Manager. Any device that is connected, even if it is a personal device, needs to be registered via Intune. We do not accept non-registered devices. 

Azure Active Directory, and Azure in general, is a very big solution that we are developing further. It takes a lot of time, but by using it, we don't need so many other resources from outside companies. We can manage everything in-house. It takes a lot of time, but it's better than other options. It has more tools and better monitoring. Those extra tools mean more time spent on it by the administrators. But it has dashboards that they didn't have before. So the administration is easier and more centralized, but you need time with all these tools.

We use it for various things in the organization:

1. Provisioning access to systems in the cloud for either internal teams or our partners' external teams. 
2. We use Azure AD for Windows device management with Azure AD Intune. We use them for the management of devices. We have company devices, laptops, or tablets all using Azure AD. 
3. Within Microsoft Azure, we use various services, e.g., Office 365, for granting the right level of access to the right people.

I am directly involved in the project. I know what is happening and being done by developers. I have also done some hands-on work in a test environment, using my own account, just to learn.

In our previous organization, we had to give continuous system access to users from external teams, who were not employed by our organization. This solution certainly helped with provisioning access to them, providing them with single sign-on access. It also monitored giant movers and leavers, which was helpful. 

Azure AD has massively affected our end-user experience. It provided a single sign-on for all our partners. They don't have to remember their password. They might be accessing 10 of our systems and don't really need to remember all 10 different user IDs and passwords. In most of cases, they are accessing our systems with their own organization's identity, so they don't need to remember a second user ID and password in addition to their organization's credentials. Requesting access is much better since it is all automated.

Their connection to the on-prem AD is a strong point. A lot of organizations already use on-prem Active Directory. That easily lends to using Azure AD compared to other providers. 

I like the automated provisioning of access, either for internal teams or external teams.

It has things like conditional access. For example, if someone is accessing sensitive information, then we could force them to do multi-factor authentication. Therefore, we can stop access if it is coming from a location that we did not expect. 

Compared to what we can do on-prem, Azure AD lacks a feature for multiple hierarchical groups. For example, Group A is part of group B. Group B is part of group C. Then, if I put someone into group A, which is part of already B, they get access to any system that group B has access to, and that provisioning is automatically there.

Geo-filtering is not that strong in Azure AD, where we need it to identify and filter out if a request is coming unexpectedly from a different country.

I have been using it for five and a half years on multiple projects.

It is very stable. In the last five years, we only had two major incidents on Azure AD. This is key for Azure services. If your Azure AD is down, then it brings down a lot of other services within Azure. 

It is very scalable.

My previous organization, which did power plant construction, had hundreds of partners at any time and about 10,000 internal staff. 

The product is extensively used. Many times, we have changed the way that we design based on new features introduced by Azure AD, so that drives what we do and how we design. Therefore, if they introduce a new feature, we send it straight on to be researched, then determine where we can use it. 

I am not directly in touch with technical support. I have never been on the other end calling Microsoft for technical support.

We didn't use another solution prior to Active Directory, which has been in place for a long time (20 to 30 years).

When we started using this feature, it saved time when provisioning access to users. Critically, it removed access to users who did not need access to the system. That was a significant improvement. Time-wise, we saved about tenfold. Its day-to-day maintenance is also much easier than without it.

We chose Azure AD when going to the cloud. It was key for us to maintain security within the organization. I don't think we could imagine securing our cloud without identity management as strong and rich as Azure AD. It is a key player in anything that we do on the cloud to secure resources and a critical element that determines our security.

I have set up test environments. The setup is easy, not difficult at all. This is one of the solution's strong points.

A lot of people already have on-prem Active Directory. It is a natural step to extend it to Azure.

Compared to other products in the market, the Azure AD deployment is the fastest. Depending on the size of the organization, it could take weeks or months to deploy.

For an organization of 10,000 users, there might be a team of five to six people supporting AD for day-to-day things.

Pricing-wise, they offer a stepladder approach. You can start with the lowest level features, then start increasing based on new requirements.

I have not really tried any other products, so I wouldn't be able to compare it with other stuff.

Start small, then expand it. When your organization wants to add Azure AD, you can try it on a smaller scale first.

I would rate it as eight out of 10. I am unfamiliar with other products in this market. That is why I am compelled to give it eight out of 10.

Azure AD manages the identities of all our employees. 

Azure AD allowed us to get rid of servers and other hardware that run at our offices. We moved everything to the cloud. Once we set up roles and permissions, it's only a matter of adding people and removing people from different groups and letting permissions flow through. 

It also saved us some money. Our IT group is tiny, so any automation we can do is valuable. We haven't had to grow the team beyond three. The employee reaction to Microsoft Entra has been positive. People like to have a single credential for accessing all our Microsoft and non-Microsoft apps.

I like Azure AD's single sign-on and identity federation features. It allows us to issue a single credential to every employee and not worry about managing a lot of passwords. Microsoft Entra provides a single pane of glass for managing user access, and we're pleased with it.

Entra's conditional access feature enables us to set policies up based on the location and risk score of the account and the device they use to access the network. Permission management lets us assign roles for various Azure functions based on functions people perform in the company. It helps us bundle access to different things by associating it with a given role at the company.

I would like to see a better delegation of access. For instance, we want to allow different groups within the company to manage different elements of Azure AD, but I need more granularity in delegating access.

We've been using Azure AD for 10 years.

I rate Azure AD nine out of ten for stability. They've had issues in the past, but it's been quite some time. It has been nearly two years since the last availability problem.

We only have 100 employees at the company, so we're nowhere near the maximum limits. I know of a massive company that adopted Azure AD. I imagine it's scalable well beyond the size of our company.

The support is decent. I always manage to find what I'm looking for. If it's not in the documentation, there are lots of blog posts that third parties have written, and I always seem to find what I need. I rate Microsoft support nine out of ten. 

Positive

We used the on-premises version of Active Directory, but we switched to the cloud to get rid of all of our hardware. We don't run any servers in the officer anymore. 

Setting up Azure AD was straightforward. It's all delivered online, so it's only a matter of filling in the parameters for our organization. After that point, it scales easily.

There's no traditional maintenance. We have to perform audits on accounts to ensure that people and permissions are still online. There isn't product or data maintenance. 

Azure AD is essential to how the business runs. We're only investing more in the whole Microsoft Suite.

We're a Microsoft partner, so we get partner benefits. We pay almost nothing, and it's massively valuable to us.

We didn't look at anything else because we're committed to Office 365, and we need to be on Active Directory for Office 365. It's a well-known, trusted solution so we never did an analysis of alternatives.

I rate Azure Active Directory nine out of ten. I'm sure there are some areas for improvement, but it's extremely valuable to us and the way that we operate.

Since we began to use Active Directory, I've learned a lot about industry best practices, particularly digital identity and its role in zero trust. By using a major mainstream identity provider, we're able to move toward the whole zero-trust model that's popular right now.

If you implement Azure AD, you need to consider the third-party apps you want to integrate. If they support competitors like Okta, Ping, and SailPoint, then they will almost certainly support Azure AD legacy applications. However, older software applications don't integrate well with Azure AD. 

We use this solution to authenticate to the portal. There are also some VMs that are not domain-joined, so we use Azure users that we create natively in the portal.

We also use it for our applications. The accounts that we create natively in Azure are used for application authentication.

We have a hybrid deployment model where some accounts are primarily native in Azure, whereas others are on-premises. We also have accounts that are synchronized between our on-premises servers and Azure.

Azure AD has features that have helped to improve our security posture. We have a service called Azure AD Privileged Identity Management, where instead of our administrators having permanent access or permanent admin assignment, they can now activate admin roles only when they need to perform administrative-level tasks.

This means that instead of using permanent assignments, our administrators activate the specific roles that they need at the moment that they need them. After the task is complete, the administrative access expires. This has definitely improved our security posture.

Using this product has also had a positive effect on our end-user experience. The self-service password reset is something that has definitely improved our end-user experience. Instead of having to call our service desk, users can now reset their own passwords.

This is important because due to our multi-factor authentication, we no longer have policies where we have to have periodic password changes. We have three and four-factor stages of authentication, which makes our logins more secure. This is why users don't have to change or reset their passwords on a regular basis.

One of the ways that Azure AD has improved the way our organization functions is to help cut down on service desk requests. If I have an issue with my password, in the past, I would have had to log a ticket with the service desk. With most of us working remotely, this would've posed a challenge. It would have required the service desk to verify that I am who I say I am, for example. Now, because users set up their own profiles and are able to change passwords for themselves, at any moment that their account is compromised, they're able to change their own password.

Overall, this solution has definitely improved our organization's security posture. We no longer have permanent administrative permission assignments, and we are also able to restrict who is able to log in to certain applications. Finally, we are able to see and review any risky or suspicious sign-ins.

Specifically, in the infrastructure team, we now have managed identities. Instead of having to create service accounts, we have managed identities that are directly linked to our resources that support them. All of that is managed by Azure Active Directory.

Another way that this solution has improved how we do our work is that we no longer have to keep a record of all service accounts or use one service account for multiple services. Now, each service that supports managed identities can have its own service account, and that is managed by Azure AD.

The most valuable feature is the conditional access policies. This gives us the ability to restrict who can access which applications or the portal in specific ways. We are able to define access based on job roles. For example, I'm primarily in the infrastructure team and only certain people should be able to connect to the Resource Manager. We can also define which IP addresses or locations those people can connect from before they can access the portal.

If your organization requires additional security then the subscription will be more expensive.

I have been using Azure Active Directory for approximately five years, since 2016.

In terms of stability, Azure Active Directory is definitely an improvement from what we used in the past. I'm happy so far with the offerings and we hardly ever have any service disruptions.

We have a lot of different people using this solution. We have normal users and we have administrators. It's a large organization.

So far, I've been happy with the technical support.

There are very few service disruptions and also, because of our agreement with Microsoft, we are able to get escalated support.

We hardly ever have any downtime. When we do need support, it's normally escalated and our service is restored in a reasonable timeframe.

I would rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Prior to this solution, we used the on-premises version of Active Directory.

The switch was part of our cloud migration strategy. For us to be able to use our apps and workloads in the cloud, we had to have Identity Management as part of our migration scope. It's linked to our cloud migration strategy.

I was not involved with the initial setup but I assume that it was not complex because we have Microsoft consultants assisting us.

We specifically work with Microsoft directly. We don't use a reseller or service provider. All of the assistance that we get is directly from the vendor.

Our technical team is responsible for deployment and maintenance. I'm not sure how many people are in that team. Somebody from security is involved, but I'm not sure what other roles are required for maintenance tasks.

We have definitenly seen a return on investment from using this product. We have seamless authentication, quicker response times, more robust security, access from anywhere without having to set up VPN links, and federated models.

If we had similar services on-premises, I assume that it would be expensive, especially given that we used to have a perpetual licensing model. Now that we are able to have a subscription-based service, it has not only improved our security posture but also cut down on costs.

My advice concerning the pricing and licensing would vary depending upon the stage of maturity of the organization. I've been with companies that are using the Office 365 license for Active Directory, whereas others are able to use the free version of it.

For organizations such as the one that I'm at now, where we require more security and have services like the Conditional Access Policies or Privileged Identity management, you have to upgrade to a higher level of the solution.

I'm not sure about the specific costs or how they're calculated, but essentially, the costs go up based on the level of security that is required by the organization.

I can't say for certain what our future plans are for Azure AD but I see it being used long-term. It has helped our organization to grow because of what we are able to do. Also, it has greatly improved our security posture because of the services that are available.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.