Microsoft Entra ID Reviews

The solution is primarily used for handling user permission and containing with the Online Exchange. It's for handling user passwords, user permissions, all of the privileges, and for using Azure Active Directory for the Online Exchange.

We're satisfied with the product in general.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the connectivity with our on-premise Active Directory.

We've found the performance to be very good.

The stability is good.

The scalability of the product is decent.

The installation process is straightforward.

The synchronization with the local Active Directory and synchronization with all of the users on the local and cloud could be better. Every user on the cloud and the on-premise local users should have a connection, have the same privilege, the same features. We should be able to change passwords from the local and have it synchronized with the cloud users.

I've used the solution for four years. It's been a while. 

The stability is good. The solution offers good performance. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

We've found the scalability of the product to be very good. There aren't any issues with expanding as needed.

In my organization, we have about 25 users. I deployed it for another organization as my company is a service consultant. Therefore, I do this installation for other users and other companies. There are about 60 users in one and another has 100 users. Another company has only 20 users there. The amount of users each organization has varies. 

We do plan to grow our team and possibly use the solution more. 

I have contacted technical support from Microsoft many times, including when the mailing system is down or when I have a problem with Active Directory or Azure. I contact the help desk for Microsoft, and they reply to me in about one hour and help me to solve any issue. It takes about three or four hours and at that point usually, everything is resolved.

The initial setup was very straightforward and simple. It was not overly complex or difficult. We didn't have any problems with the process.

The deployment for the local setup takes some time. For the cloud, it's very straightforward, and it takes no time at all. It takes about two hours to totally install the hybrid, the connection, and go on with the application.

We have about five people who can handle deployment and maintenance duties. That includes me and five engineers.

I can handle the implementation myself. I do not need the help of an integrator or consultant.

We have many customers that purchase licensing agreements with Azure. Typically they are charged per user.

We're a partner.

I would recommend the solution to others. If they just read a bit about it and connect with Microsoft, they'll likely get some good advice as to how to use it. 

I'd rate it at a nine out of ten. 

We use Azure Active Directory to make the computers have policies that we inspect. This allows us to deploy software and block the CMD from the user. Additionally, we deploy the desktop systems with password policies.

Azure Active Directory has helped the organization maintain the user policies of their computer systems.

Azure Active Directory has useful policy assigning and management.

I had some issues with the Azure Active Directory on Windows XP. However, it worked well on Windows 7.

The password policy that we had in place caused some system lockups.

I have used Azure Active Directory within the last 12 months.

The solution is stable.

Azure Active Directory is easy to scale. You can add new employees, by adding their device to the domain assisting.

We have approximately 300 people using this solution in my organization.

My organization plans to continue to use Azure Active Directory.

The technical support has been helpful.

The installation was simple. I did the flash OS installation, created the role of the Active Directory, and deployed the GPO. The full process of implementation takes approximately one hour and setting the Active Directory domain takes approximately 30 minutes.

I did the implementation of Azure Active Directory.

The company I work for has more than 10 branches, we no longer have to go to the branch outside the city to have the application installed on the user's devices. When you have Active Directory, you only need to connect it to the device and then the information will automatically populate. The process was more automated.

The price of the solution's license is good.

I rate Azure Active Directory an eight of ten.

Active Directory is used for authentication and provisioning for users and devices and granting them access.

We're in a hybrid mode where we still have on-prem controllers as well.

The beauty is that it affords us more of an anytime, anywhere operation because we're not tied to an on-prem solution. From a customer experience standpoint, users don't really care about what goes on behind the scenes technically. They just want their lives to be easier. Now that they can access Office 365 globally, anywhere from any device, that's huge. That helps productivity and gives them the ability to get work done. And having to manage fewer passwords and user IDs is another true advantage.

The solution gives users seamless integration to all these products and streamlines the user experience. That's definitely been a pro.

In this completely upside-down world that we're in these days, with most people elsewhere and very few people in the office, it gives us tremendous flexibility for keeping people productive and providing them with access to the data and tools that they need to perform their jobs. It has given us the opportunity to move to this more mobile environment.

Also, the SSO aspect improves our security posture because people aren't writing down or creating a list of all their passwords. Now they only have to remember one. It has definitely made it easier for them to manage. In addition, we've introduced MFA so that whenever you sign in, you're also challenged for approval on your mobile device. That adds to the security.

The single sign-on across multiple platforms is really the true advantage here. That gives you one ID and password for access to all your systems. You don't need to manage a plethora of different user IDs and passwords to all the systems that you're going to access. 

The downside is that we now have all our eggs in one basket with Microsoft. We have this great authentication and single sign-on, but if Microsoft has an outage in North America or globally, on Outlook or Teams, we're dead in the water. There is no drop-back-and-punt. There is no "Plan B." The bottom line is that if their services go down, our productivity goes with it. Working with them when we have outages can be very frustrating. We get some type of hiccup once a quarter.

We get service notifications from them all the time that the services are under investigation or that there is some type of issue. More than the headache of not completely understanding the severity, we have to make sure that we communicate with our end-users. We get to the point where we're potentially "crying wolf." We're telling them there's a problem but some people don't have the problem. Then they get to the point where they just ignore our communication.

Outages can last hours, but never more than a day. They can be regional outages where one area is affected and other areas aren't. The advantage is that it could be evening or night in the area that is down, so it's less impactful.

I've been using Azure Active Directory at my current company for just about four years.

My impression of the stability is mixed. If it were really working correctly, it should be able to digest these outages by rerouting us to other areas. But that doesn't happen.

We have a global footprint, so it scales globally, no doubt.

Tech support from Microsoft has been cumbersome for Office 365. We don't really get the answers we want in a timely manner. There are times that we get the runaround, and that's the downside to being an early adopter and being on the leading edge. Sometimes we have to sometimes QA and work out issues with their products, which I'd rather not have to do.

A larger shop, like a Goldman Sachs or a JP Morgan, is not going to adopt this stuff until it's mature. And that means that smaller companies, like ours, have worked out the kinks.

Neutral

Before AAD we used the on-prem version with on-prem controllers. We went with AAD because there was no other option. We had their on-prem solution, and in the evolution directed by our CTO, everything is moving to the cloud. The next logical next step was to move to AAD.

I didn't set it up, the guys who work for me did it. I think it was fairly complex because we're about to go through an acquisition and we are going to merge them into our tenant. We have to outsource some of that work to a third party to assist us with that because we don't have the in-house skills.

Costs are constantly being managed. We don't really have a choice. It's the one shop in town. If you want this, you have to pay for it. We have an E5 license, which I believe is the most expensive license.

From an AAD standpoint, I don't think we've had any issues. The data replicates correctly and no one really has a problem with their credentials from AAD. It's meeting our expectations.

We use Active Directory to manage our main database and control students and staff access with rules and passwords. Usernames, emails, etc., are all integrated with Active Directory. Office 365 is also integrated with our Active Directory.

The best thing about Active Directory is its compatibility. It works with lots of third-party vendors. We're using multiple products, and they're all integrated with our Active Directory.

Active Directory could always be more secure. Right now, we've got two-factor authentications. All services based on Active Directory have a username and password. If somebody hacked our username, they could easily get all the data from our side. So I want two-factor authentication and a stronger password policy from Active Directory. The domain controllers should be more secure as well.

We've been using Microsoft Active Directory for more than 10 years. 

Active Directory is a stable, scalable product.

Microsoft technical support is very good. They call us back and resolve the problem.

The setup is effortless because we've been using this solution for a while. We are familiar with the setup now, so it's easier.

We get a discount because we're working in the education sector. 

I rate Active Directory eight out of 10. I think this is a good product. Most enterprises are using this. We don't currently have any plans to switch, but we're planning to migrate more into the cloud. However, cloud service is still costly, so we are working on the premiums. I would recommend Active Directory for any large-scale company, organization, or university. 

The solution allows us to assign and give the access and controls. It allows us to monitor privileges with the users so that we can then be in control of the access given to digital resources.

The best example of how it has helped our organization is when we migrated toward Azure. We were able to take all the users which were there on-prem and migrated them over. If those facilities were not there in Azure Active Directory, then we would likely have to create individual users and one by one give them specific access. We'd have to look at their needs and set authentication. It would be hard to control users that needed higher admin-level access. Without the Active Directory, we would not have the control we needed. 

Azure AD has features that have helped improve our security posture. That's one of the basic fundamentals of having an Active Directory. The whole concept of Azure Active Directory came from the Active Directory on-prem version. There’s this tunnel of authentication that it has.

When you migrate, you can migrate your Active Directory on-prem onto the Azure Active Directory which has tightly integrated features due to the fact that they both are from Microsoft. Based on that, you can give access based on what privileges are needed. Basically, if you're talking about security, everything is related to role-based access. The security aspect is linked to providing the proper access.

My understanding is, in the future, they will be able to bring everything into one single platform and they are not there yet. We are loving third-party authentication, however, those authentications will be further scrutinized by AD itself.

For example, if you want to book a flight, you go to any website to book. Booking the flight can be divided into two parts. One is creating a log-in with a particular website and then booking. However, if there are five to ten websites and you want to compare prices on all of them. You aren’t going to set up a log-in for each and every site. That's not feasible.

Instead, you can use your own login credentials, for example, from your Hotmail or Google account. Then, you have a token authenticated by Google, et cetera, which gives you the privilege to do the booking for a particular session. This is similar to what Azure AD should do in the future for authentication and allowing access.

I've been using the solution for at least four to five years. 

The stability is good. It's always there. If it is down then that's it. Anyone can log in. Anyone can do anything, whatever they want to do. That's why it's considered the backbone of the security pillar. There has never been any downtime, however.

Azure AD is scalable. You don't need to take care of it as it's a part of the service which is taken care of by Azure itself based on how our company grows. Basically, it's a hidden feature, and scaling it for the end-user is always happening. It's always scaling.

We have about 3,000 users on Azure AD currently.

I've been working as an architect and therefore have never directly dealt with technical support. 

I work on different platforms. For example, I work on AWS and GCP (Google Cloud Platform), et cetera. Azure AD is very good and very powerful and offers a basic foundation having the highest status or dominance in terms of providing access management. It's tightly getting integrated with the on-premise solutions. That’s true irrespective of what cloud you're using - whether GCP, AWS, Oracle, or IBM - whatever the cloud provider, you're using the services you will be using a laptop or dashboard.

We are now working remotely. However, having remote access doesn't mean that you are not entering the company premises virtually. Basically, everything is going through your company's network. You're just going through to a cloud. You can move across platforms to validate. You can still use the AWS site to authenticate and verify the users. No matter the cloud, you’re still using Azure AD to get access.

I wouldn't say the initial setup is complex. If you have a good understanding of the product, you can break down your tasks. Then, slowly, step by step you can complete all the tasks.

Our operations team did the migration from on-prem AD to Azure AD. Therefore, I cannot speak to the exact length of time it took. My work was to design the architect and provide them with the solution. 

I have clients who have seen an ROI.

I'm not a Microsoft partner. I work as a consultant.

I'm predominantly using the SaaS deployment version. 

My advice to potential users is on the security side. There was a famous article on Gartner which clearly stated that by the end of about 2023 or 2024 if someone tries to access your network or if anything becomes accessible or has been exposed, it is not the cloud provider that is the problem. It is due to a misconfiguration of the services.

It's not really with the user. It's really with how and what kind of access you provide to that user. For example, if I give someone an admin status, and they provide access to someone, they are providing not only basic access, they’re giving access privilege or admin rights. If they’re giving admin rights to the wrong person, even though they may have the best intentions, due to a lack of knowledge, that person may do something stupid and it may be a disaster to the company. That has nothing to do with the AD users themselves. You need to be aware of the security and the access that you're granting your users at all times.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I use a Microsoft 365 cloud deployment and I have an organization where users are created. All of these users are hosted in Azure AD. I send emails in Exchange Online. 

For collaboration, we use Teams and SharePoint. Basically, all of these Microsoft products are on Azure AD. This is due to the fact that for you to use any of these products, users have to be created and these users are being hosted in Azure Active Directory. Without the users in the first place, the products are not used. 

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the ability to create users and host them in Azure AD. That is the bedrock - whatever it is you are doing, you're building on the fact that you have users created. We have Microsoft Teams to manage users and also to manage groups which allow us to manage collaborations and do all sorts of things.

Azure AD has features that have helped improve our security posture. It contains the Azure audit logs that allow you to also audit activities in the organization including those that have happened over a period of time. There is Azure sign-in that allows you to check for sign-in over a period of time for users.

From Azure Active Directory you can actually identify the IP address and run checks or maybe block the IP to improve the security posture of the organization.

The Azure sign-on and audit logs are very handy for a regular admin. They offer the most basic admin solutions to carry out activities on Azure security settings to identify potential threats and carry out some corrective actions on it.

We can use Azure Active Directory to deploy enterprise applications to incorporate third-party applications into the organization and make them available to users. You can put in place multilingual authentications and you can specify the kind of authentication you want to be available for your organization.

Most recently, you can use password-based authentication and multi-factor authentication, which allows for the ability to bring on third-party applications and to incorporate them and deploy them for users.

With Azure Conditional Access you can specify network locations where you want some of the services in the organization to be available to users, and where you don't want users to have access. You can customize and define conditional access to whatever suits the organization and based on what you want, including information protection. You can get conditional access depending on the license you have.

From my personal experience, I'd say that the features need to be more visible to make the product easier to explore for new users. They need to make it possible for someone with very little knowledge to come in and find things. The product needs to be more user-friendly. 

The solution needs to update documentation much more regularly. They need to just come out and update the documentation to reflect new features and make sure the updates are included in the already existing documentation so that someone like me can just pick up the documentation, read it, and know that it is very up-to-date listed and has all the new features contained within it.

I have been using Azure Active Directory Office 365 for over two years.

The solution is exceptionally stable. It's just a way to go on another solution, however, that said, I've noticed a 99.9% stability.

It's my understanding that the solution is very scalable. 

In my experience, I've managed hundreds of users on this product.

We can contact and support directly from the Azure Active Directory if we get stuck. As long as you are actually on the most basic billing subscription, you will be able to access assistance. That said, depending on the Azure license you have, you can get access to technical support for Microsoft Azure Active Directory.

My personal experience with using Microsoft support has been positive. I want to be fair, to be very honest, and the Microsoft support has to be one of the most agreeable out there as all you need to do is just submit the ticket and you get someone to contact you very quickly. They are always available. From the perspective of Azure Active Directory, as long as you have the required license you can contact the corresponding level of support. You can be sure of getting corporate support when you need it.

Previously, the organization had an environment where we managed everything locally. Azure Active Directory actually was our first entry into cloud solutions. We have not used other cloud solutions apart from Azure Active Directory.

The difficulty or ease of the initial implementation depends on the company and the level of experience as well as the level of knowledge of the IT team. The experience needed for cloud solutions is relative. I can say it's straightforward and even with a little experience or knowledge it is straightforward. The documentation is available and you can read and follow the documentation to handle the process. Of course, for new users, it could be a bit more straightforward.

For me, provisioning takes a few minutes - maybe between ten to 20 minutes. Normally it should take less than 30 minutes.

For this particular instance, we needed to add multiple users individually and sometimes as a bulk upload in the case of inboxes. Some needed third-party services. The documentation made the process pretty easy, however, when we did have issues, we could reach out to technical support to finish anything up. 

We have seen an ROI. It's actually cut some costs. Initially, we were using a local environment. Now, we've almost rid ourselves of one of our local environments. Moving to the cloud has saved us a lot of costs and actually, it's a very good experience. It's cost-effective compared to what we used before. It's better in terms of lowering our overall expenditure.

The prices are not too out of place. We're just gradually getting out of COVID and Microsoft is actually putting some renewals, licenses, and some products out just to cushion the effect of license costs as companies recover. With Microsoft, some products also offer free trials. 

We'd like to see more of a discount on existing licenses. They also need to consider having some free licenses, some free subscriptions.

I'm actually a customer. I have an environment in my home meaning I have a subscription that I've paid for. However, I also do consultancy based on the knowledge I currently have. I offer my knowledge to other organizations.

I would advise new users to allow open demos of cloud solutions and figure out what is on offer, what is available, or what can be made better. By doing a POC, you'll get to see resources used and what it's like to handle an environment entirely in the cloud. Organizations can consider gradually moving over or they can actually move completely to the cloud depending on what they want to do. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. It's a good solution, especially for companies following the trend of moving onto the cloud. There's always room for improvement, however, currently, they are doing very well.

When a customer is trying to synchronize user information from their on-premises environment to the cloud, they might be encountering a series of errors or they may not be able to achieve what they are trying to achieve. They will raise a ticket so that somebody can help resolve the problem or clarify the situation and explain what the workflow should be like. That's where I often come in.

My support scope is focused on the synchronization aspect of Azure Active Directory. My specialty covers scenarios where customers have information in their on-premises environment and they want to synchronize their Active Directory information into the cloud with Azure Active Directory.

In addition to getting on calls and assisting customers to resolve issues, we also try to help educate customers on how to achieve the best results with Microsoft products.

In terms of the security posture of my customers, in the area of my specialization—the synchronization of information from on-premises to the cloud—there's an aspect we call TLS. There was a version of TLS that was not really secure, but Microsoft has now pushed and made sure that everything running in its platform uses a higher version, TLS 1.2. That means that when you are doing directory synchronization, your machine and your product need to be TLS 1.2 enabled. Microsoft is always working on enforcing the use of the most secure means to carry out whatever workloads customers are running. While my day-to-day job does not involve an emphasis on security, the areas that do involve security elements are emphasized to make things work effectively.

It also helps when you're troubleshooting. If you have an issue, it's easier for a user to look at it and say, "Okay, this is the problem," and to work on it.

An aspect of Azure's synchronization technology is called the provisioning service. It's the technology that takes user information from Azure AD into third-party applications. If a company has hundreds of users that already exist in the cloud, and it now wants to enable those same users to be present in third-party applications that their business uses, like Atlassian or GoToMeeting, the provisioning technology can assist in achieving that.

Over the years, the performance of this particular technology has greatly improved. I have seen its evolution and growth. Customers see much more robust performance from that technology and it gives them an easy way to set up their environments. The product has been designed quite well and customer feedback has also been taken into consideration. You can even see the progress of the process: how the user is being created and sent over to the third-party application.

Recently, Microsoft has developed lightweight synchronization software, the Cloud Provisioning Agent, to do the job of the preceding, heavier version called AD Connect. You can do a lot more with AD Connect, but it can take a lot of expertise to manage and maintain it. As a result, customers were raising a lot of tickets. So Microsoft developed the lightweight version. However, there are still a lot of features that the Cloud Provisioning Agent lacks. I would like to see it upgraded. 

The Cloud Provisioning Agent cannot provision a lot of the information that AD Connect does. For starters, the lightweight version cannot synchronize device information. If you have computers on-premises, the information about them will not be synchronized by the Cloud Provisioning Agent. In addition, if you have a user on the cloud and he changes his password, that information should be written back to the on-premises instance. But that workflow cannot be done with the lightweight agent. It can only be done with the more robust version.

I believe the Cloud Provisioning Agent will be upgraded eventually, it's just a matter of time.

I've been using the Azure Active Directory platform for a little over three years. I started supporting the product in October of 2018.

Our company is a Microsoft partner. When Microsoft customers raise tickets, most of these tickets get routed to partners like us. I follow up on and assist customers when they have issues that relate to my area of expertise.

Azure AD is solid because of the way the product is designed and because the people who support it are very good.

Microsoft is a very big organization. Whenever they put products on the market, they take things like scalability into consideration. They make sure the life cycle of the product matches the demands and the usage of customers. This product should have a long life in the market.

Microsoft technical support is great. Fantastic. Microsoft is looking to push the capabilities of its products, to enable customers to achieve more.

In general, there has been improvement in the way the technology can be used by end-users. Their feedback has been taken into consideration and that has helped a great deal.

Azure AD has features that have been developed purely for the security of users. It has things like Conditional Access policies and MFA. But the nature of the support that I provide in Azure AD doesn't focus on security. While Azure AD gives a company a holistic way to manage user profiles, I don't usually work on security aspects. But I do know that, to a large extent, the solution is built using the latest security.

The provisioning service I support has authentication methods. There has been a push by Microsoft to move customers away from certain authentication mechanisms that are not very strong in terms of security, and to make sure that secure standards are being enforced. I have looked at integrations set up by customers where they have only done the basic minimum in terms of security. Microsoft had to push those customers towards a much more secure setup. So customers are getting better security.

Overall, the effect of the product on my customers' experience has been good. I generally come into the picture when customers are having an issue. Most customers I've interacted with don't understand some information or why the product is designed the way it is. When I explain that it has to be this way so that they can do what they need to do, the customer feedback comes in at about an eight out of 10.