Microsoft Entra ID Reviews

The primary use case is for the authentication of the users. We actually onboarded around 3000 to 4000 users at our go live, which are various application users from across the US and the other regions.

The best feature is the single sign-on provision for the various type of users. That is our sole purpose for working on that and utilizing that service as creating a custom solution for a single sign-on would be difficult when we have around 50 applications within our company that has been used by users across the globe. That includes North America plus Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. It is very difficult and complicated to do things on our own. Instead of doing that, we just acquired the service from Microsoft for single sign-on, and for that purpose, we are using the Microsoft Azure Active Directory authentication.

From our utilization perspective, they are providing almost everything. That said, the customization, like the data sharing between the application, is something that needs to be improved from their side. For example, we are sharing certain types of data. We have a container application structure, so we have a single sign-on application where we are using the Active Directory authentication, and when the user clicks on that application, the information of that user is passed to the child application, and the child application does not authenticate the user again. That is a single sign-on concept, which is available across 50 applications within that container. We pass a lot of various types of data, therefore, there's a limited capability of doing that in Microsoft Azure as, on the Azure Active Directory, we may be able to create some additional attributes, however, there are certain limitations.

Technical support could be better.

I haven't explored all aspects of the solution just yet. There's still more to look at.

We've been using the solution for as far as our last project, in which is currently being used. We have been using it for the last four years.

This is a stable solution. Since our product went live in 2017, we never got an issue with respect to authentication.

The product is scalable. It is not even region-specific. You can change the region. For example, if you want to target European users, you can simply purchase a plan for a European server or something like that. Currently, I know that our application is running in the United States region, and our targeted users are from the United States, so our application is working in the North American region, the east area.

Technical support is a thing they need to improve a lot from their side.

The engineers from the Microsoft side are professional, however, the thing is they're working on the shifts. For example, if you encountered an issue which is affecting our production application, and we talk to a guy from Microsoft in Central Standard Time. While he will be available then if the issue is ongoing for more than eight hours, which exceeds their standard working hours, he will just put a hold on the call and will say that my next representative will get back to you on this issue, and when the next representative arrives you kind of need to start over.

The Active Directory just plays a role in authenticating the user, and it doesn't do anything else, just authentication. The services where the deployment is being done, that is a different thing. It is an application service in itself. We have an Azure Active Directory service. Besides that, we have application deployments or application services on Azure as well. That is a separate service, which is used for the deployment of the application, so when a user is accessing the application, he is redirected to the Microsoft Azure authentication application where the authentication is being performed. So far, the authentication has been performed, and that user is being redirected to our actual application, which has been deployed on the Azure service. Therefore, there isn't really a direct deployment per se for this product.

I'm not familiar with the pricing aspect of the solution. The client deals with that end of things. My general understanding is that it is quite expensive.

I'd rate the solution an eight out of ten. They do have an outstanding service compared to the competition. 

The main reason for implementing this solution was to help our customers to access internal or external resources seamlessly while allowing them to have full control over access and permissions. 

This enterprise identity service provided our customers with many security features such as single sign-on, multifactor authentication, and conditional access to guard against multiple cybersecurity attacks. 

Most of the clients have either Office 365 with hybrid solutions, a multi-cloud environment and they want to leverage Azure AD to manage access to those clouds or they have hybrid deployments with legacy apps on-premises and on the cloud as well. 

We have applied this solution to multiple organizations and it has helped them manage their environments efficiently. Moreover, it provided a high level of security and security features that are appreciated by most of our clients.

In hybrid scenarios, this is one of the best products you could have. It helped many of our customers to manage resources on-premises and in the cloud from a single dashboard. 

It helped our client to control permissions and review permissions for employees who have left the organization which kept them on-control over access and permissions granted to their employees.

The solution has many valuable aspects, including:

• Password policy enforcement
• Conditional access policies
• Self-service password reset for could users and on-premises
• Azure Active Directory Identity Protection
• Privileged Identity Management
• Multi-factor authentication 
• Passwordless authentication and sign-in
• Business to business and client to business support
• Support for SAML and OAuth

There are many more features that are very useful and can be used as part of the P2 package. There is no need to install any agent or tool to utilize those features except when extending advanced features to the on-premises active directory.

I believe the product is perfect, however, it could be improved if it could integrate with other clouds with fewer efforts and provide the same functionality it provides to Microsoft products.

Most of the features come with a P1 or P2 license. With the free version, you do not get much.

The objects in Azure AD are not managed in organizational units similar to what you get in the windows server active directory, which makes it more difficult to delegate administrative tasks

Azure AD does not support legacy authentication protocols, such as NTLM or Kerberos.

Azure AD is unaware of group policies. If you would like to use the same on-premises group policies, then you need to use the passthrough authentication method with your existing on-premises AD servers. This would compromise the high availability of the cloud and create a single point of failure.

I have been using this tool for more than five years.

A Very stable solution, I never saw the service down, unavailable, or anything like that.

The solution is highly scalable. There are no worries at all about the bandwidth or any other concerns. 

We've had a very positive experience and our clients are adopting it more as their sole identity and access management solution. 

Positive

We did use the SailPoint Identity Platform. There was no cloud solution at that time which is why we switched.

The ease of setup depends on the scenario and the use cases of your organization. 

We are a vendor team and most of the implementation for enterprise clients is done via us or similar vendors. 

The solution has a high ROI when adopted properly in your organization.

Make sure to check which features your organization requires. Find out if they are applicable to all users or just a bunch of them before deciding on buying a license.

We looked at many products, however, I do not want to mention the products' names. 

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have been using it for four years.

It is very simple to manage.

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

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

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

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

The initial setup is straightforward. 

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

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

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

Deployment needs just one person to do it.

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

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

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

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

I know AWS has something similar.

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

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

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

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

I would rate this solution as 10 out of 10.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have been using it for a couple of years.

I haven't seen any major issues. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The whole deployment process should take less than one FTE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Azure Active Directory is similar to an on-premises access control system, but the service and data are hosted in the Azure cloud. Previously, everyone used to have Windows servers built as domain controllers for Active Directory to store their employee data. This assumed the role of a database for their employees.

With Azure Active Directory, which is in the cloud, you have the same functionality and there isn't much of a difference. The defining point is that you have access to online, cloud-based resources, such as Office 365.

In my company, as well as others, we had already implemented the on-premises Active Directory for our infrastructure. We leverage Azure Active Directory to synchronize the existing on-premises details to the cloud so that it creates an identity in Azure, which allows it to be used for other SaaS-based solutions.

This is the kind of solution that I feel you cannot run an organization without using.

Going forward, I expect that this solution will help to eliminate our on-premises infrastructure. Perhaps in the next few years, many companies will question their need for on-premises infrastructure and implement a purely cloud-based position. It will be a pay-as-you-go service.

Using this solution has affected our end-user experience because it enables and supports the Office 365 products that Azure provides. It is indirectly linked to all of the Office 365 solutions.

This is a feature-rich solution.

It offers features that improve our security posture such as multifactor authentication, which is the second layer of protection that is used when we log into the cloud.

The documentation, and the way that people are notified of updates, are things that can be improved. I'm a big fan of Microsoft products but the way they document is not that great.

I have been using Azure Active Directory for the past four years.

This solution was implemented approximately five years ago, before I joined the company.

We use this product on a daily basis. In fact, it is constantly being used and we don't have any problems with stability.

The scalability is good, and it is one of the reasons that we opted for a cloud solution.

We have more than 60,000 employees in the company and it scales very nicely. If more employees join the company then our usage will increase.

There are a variety of roles including administrators and different users. We have between 200 and 300 administrators.

Technical support from Microsoft is excellent.

We have had multiple issues where technical support has been needed. For example, the other day, we had a problem with synchronization. One of the user licenses was not synchronized properly and when we identified the root cause, it showed that the profile was not linked to the Active Directory Account. That was the main problem.

For us, it's constant improvement. Once a problem has been resolved, we document it accordingly so that it doesn't reoccur. Essentially, we don't want to have the same story again.

We also have Active Directory implemented on-premises, and it synchronizes with our cloud solution. The traditional Active Directory is what we used before this.

I was not responsible for the initial setup but my feeling is that it is not very straightforward. From a technical perspective, I expect that it is somewhat complex.

The deployment took approximately six weeks. We are a large company with more than 60,000 employees and I expect that for a smaller company, with perhaps 100 or 200 employees, it might take a day or two to complete.

One of the senior engineers in my organization was responsible for deployment. We also had assistance from Microsoft consultants. Between five and ten people were required for the deployment because it's a larger company.

There is no maintenance that needs to be done on our part. However, we have between 10 and 15 people who closely work on Azure Active Directory. 

Everyone uses a cloud solution to reduce the on-premises infrastructure cost and maintenance. In the coming years, there will be a lot of returns or a lot of cost-cutting that will happen.

The licensing is good and it is really easy to manage. We make sure that we only enable the licenses that are needed for the users, rather than enabling licenses in a blanket fashion. Basically, we only enable the features that are required for each of the users.

There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

Microsoft is a vendor that is always one step ahead.

The biggest lesson that I have learned is to read the documentation properly and thoroughly. Microsoft is great, but the documentation is sometimes updated and we aren't notified. This means that anytime you apply any solution, just make sure that you follow the proper guidance and always test before deployment.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.