Microsoft Entra ID Reviews

We use it mainly for our Office 365 files. The integration between the two is interesting. It's been a learning curve.

Overall, it's not a very intuitive solution.

When you have an Office 365 enterprise subscription, it comes with Azure Active Directory. We don't have a subscription to Active Directory, but our Active Directory connector puts our credentials into the Azure Active Directory. On the Office 365 side, we're also in the GCC high 365, so it's a lot more locked down. There are a few things that aren't implemented which make things frustrating. I don't blame the product necessarily, but there are links and things within there that still point back to the .com-side and not the .us-side.

There's a security portal and a compliance portal. They're being maintained, but one's being phased in and the others are being phased out. Things continue to change. I guess that's good, but it's just been a bit of a learning curve.

Our Office 365 subscriptions are tied to our on-prem domain — I have a domain admin there. With our Active Directory connector, our on-prem credentials are being pushed to the cloud. We also have domain credentials in the cloud, but there's no Office subscription tied to it, just to do the administration stuff. I moved my sync credential to have a lot more administrative privileges. Some of the documentation I was reading clearly showed that when you have this particular ability right on the Azure side, and then you have another ability on the Office side, that intuitively, the Microsoft cloud knows to give you certain rights to be able to do stuff. They're just kind of hidden in different places.

Some things are in Exchange, and some things are in the Intune section. We had a few extra light subscriptions that weren't being used, so I gave my microsoft.us admin account a whole other subscription. In the big scheme of things, it's roughly $500 a year additionally — it just seems like a lot. I didn't create a mailbox for that and I was trying to do something in Exchange online and it said I couldn't do it because I didn't have a mailbox.

You can expect a different user experience between on-prem and online. Through this cloud period, we have premiere services, we have a premiere agreement and we had an excellent engineer help us with an exchange upgrade where we needed a server. We needed an OS upgrade and we needed the exchange upgrade on the on-prem hybrid server. We asked this engineer for assistance because my CIO wanted to get rid of the on-prem exchange hybrid server, but everything that I was reading was saying that you needed to keep it as long as you had anything on-prem. We asked the engineer about it and he said, "Yeah, you want to keep that." In his opinion, it was at least going to be two years. So at least I got my CIO to stop talking about that. It's just been an interesting time in this transition between on-prem and in the cloud.

In a secure environment, a lot of this stuff is PowerShell, which is fine. It's a learning curve, but if you don't use it all time, then it's a lot of back and forth with looking at the documentation and looking at other blogs. If you're in a secure environment, the Windows RM (remote management) stuff can be blocked, and that's frustrating, too.

I have been using this solution for roughly five months.

It's definitely both stable and scalable. I used to work in an environment where we had a couple of onsite engineers from Microsoft and I worked on Active Directory — I did that for four years. We did the Active Directory health check, so I actually worked with the engineer for a week and went through our Active Directory. At the time, Microsoft said it was one of the top five most complicated forests out there. We had 150,000 users and 18 domains across the globe supporting the military, so it was pretty big. 

We have experience with their premier support. We have a live audit coming up shortly so we don't have a lot of time to waste, waiting for support to get back to us — unless it's very critical. 

I wasn't involved in the initial setup, so I cannot comment on that. 

We used an integrator, however, we don't speak of his name anymore. 

I think we're on the E3 — I think it was about 35 dollars per user. We may go up to the E5, which includes Project Online and the telecom service in TEAMS. We're in the process of rolling out Office 365 internally. We've had really great feedback that people really like TEAMS and we want to move there. 

We had a roadmap meeting with Microsoft a few months ago. Some of the more accessible types of things were on the roadmap for the first quarter of this year. I know that Microsoft's working hard at listening to their customers, especially through COVID. Collaboration has changed. They also have military folks, that's why they created the GCC High. Once they got into the GCC high, they're like, "Oh, we need to collaborate a little bit more." So they've been pushing a little bit more on integration. We're not going to have that kind of clout where I am, but where I used to work, we would've. 

Overall, I would give Microsoft Azure Active Directory Premium a rating of four out of ten. They could really benefit from some better user-training. 

The solution is a hybrid cloud with connectors into Azure/Microsoft 365 cloud.

I am still figuring out the whole on-prem/Azure Active Directory Premium/Microsoft 365 integrations and administrative connections.

The scalability of the solution is good.

Technical support can be helpful.

It's not intuitive and we use it mainly for our hybrid capability now and are expanding our footprint in Microsoft 365. The integration between on-prem and Online is interesting. However, the learning curve is high.

When you have an Office 365 enterprise subscription, it comes with Azure Active Directory, however, you don't have an Azure subscription. Yet, all of our active directory connectors put our credentials into the Azure Active Directory. 

There are enough things that aren't implemented on our side and we are in the middle of this transition.  I don't blame the product necessarily for that. However, there are links and items within Microsoft 365 that still point back to the .com side.

Items seem to continue to move, such as security and compliance. Now there's a security portal and a compliance portal, and all three are still being maintained, however, one's being phased in and the others are being phased out. Things continue to change. It's just been a bit to learn. There's a lot to keep track of. There should be a bit more transparency.

The Office 365 subscriptions are a bit confusing with a hybrid environment with what credential has an Microsoft 365 subscription.  However, then some of the documentation I was reading this week was where I ran into a wall. This particular document clearly showed that when you have a particular ability on the Azure side, and then you have another ability on the Office side, intuitively the Microsoft cloud knows to give you certain other rights, to be able to do stuff. This settings and configurations are in different places. Some things are then in the Exchange Online, some things are in the Intune section, etc.

I am not sure if the intent is to have an Microsoft 365 administrator with a second subscription for a cloud admin account or not.  I was trying to do something in Exchange online and received a message that I couldn't do it because I didn't have a mailbox. It's frustrating and confusing at times. There are things like that just are a different user experience between on-prem and online.

The Microsoft Premier Agreement we have has been very beneficial and we have had an excellent experience with a couple of different short cycle projects.

We've been working with the solution for just over a year and I have been involved for the last five months. It's been under a year, and not very long just yet.

The scalability seems to be there.  We are not a very big shop but we have unique needs and requirements.

The premier services we have are very good. We have a contact that's been with Microsoft a while and that's really saved us. The reach back into field engineers and their amazing ability to get the job done have been hugely beneficial.  The Exchange Online engineer we had was worth double what we paid for. It was amazing. If it weren't for that, I am not sure if we would have made our schedule.  Often the timing hasn't lined up, with short notice compliance requirements and implementation constraints due to configuration or version of technology.  They are very responsive, but depending on if it's break fix or planning, the planning side as longer cycles.   

I wasn't a part of the initial setup. I can't speak to how long the deployment took or how easy or difficult the process was.

We had assistance with the setup. We're actually bringing in some more help as our needs have short turn cycles and some ageing infrastructure that we still have to move online.

I would say to make sure you have a trusted integration partner or someone on staff that has been through this transition.

We're just customers. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

While we use the on-premises model, we also have it synced for hybrid functionality.

With COVID especially, there have been a lot of changes in a lot of companies and a lot of rethinking of processes lately.

We're in the process of rolling out Office 356 internally. We've had really great feedback that people really like Teams, and we want to move more into that area. We had a roadmap meeting with Microsoft a few months ago. It was probably five months ago, four or five months ago.

Some of the more accessible types of items were on the roadmap for the first quarter of this year. However, Microsoft's working hard at listening to customers, especially through the COVID situation that changed a lot of work and priorities. The collaboration stuff has changed. They've been pushing a little bit more on getting some more integrations. We're not going to have that kind of clout where I am, however, where I used to work, we would have. We were the ones that were making sure the Exchange got upgraded and got to the developers.

I would rate the solution at a six out of ten. If the solution offered better transparency/clarity I might rate it higher.

A lot of our clients basically want to go to the cloud and they don't know how to proceed with doing so. The first thing we recommended is to make sure their identity is in Azure AD as a hybrid approach. We're not getting rid of their on-premises environment, and instead basically, if they're planning to go to Office 365,  they will be able to take advantage of the Azure Active Directory.

Especially nowadays, people are working from home and we have a client that we actually started migrating to Azure Active Directory and moving some of their applications into the cloud. Since COVID struck, and a lot of people are working from home, since the data center's on-premises, it is very hard for them to bring all of their users into VPN and some of them there are outdated and they can't really accommodate the number of users that are working from home.

However, with Azure AD, some of their applications we have in there they can access from anywhere - even from their home basically, as long as they have internet access. Some of the applications we brought into Azure AD include the Windows Virtual Desktop to basically run their application in the cloud. We built a gateway to their own premises data center and they go into the Windows Virtual Desktop and they can authenticate using Azure AD and then they can access their on-premises application. It's basically the transition from being on-site all the time to working from home. It's a smooth transition because of Azure AD.

The solution's ease of use is one of its most valuable features. You can access it anywhere and the integration into existing and some legacy applications is good. You can plug into single sign-on self-service, password reset, or conditional access. If you're inside, you don't need to do multi-factor authentication, MFA's, built-in. 

The licensing could be improved. There are premium one, premium two or P1, P2 licensing right now and a lot of organizations are a little bit confused about the licensing information that they have. They want to know how much they're spending. It's not really clear cut. 

Transitioning to the cloud is very difficult. They need the training to make it easier. They should probably put in more training or even include it on the licensing so that there are people that manage their environment have somewhere to come to learn on their own. Maybe there could be some workshop or training within Azure. 

The solution could offer better notifications. They do upgrades once or twice a year. They need to do a better job of alerting users to the changes that are upcoming - especially on the portal where you manage your users and accounts. There needs to be enough time to showcase the new features so your organization is not surprised or put off by sudden changes. 

I've been at this organization since 2016, and therefore have been working with the solution for four years.

The solution is pretty stable. Once in a while, we get notifications and do a health check if some things are not working or there is some feature or some issue that is acting up. However, that is very seldom.

Scalability is really not a problem. You don't have to really worry about that as it's more of a service. It's not like having your own AD that you need to span the main controllers or to purchase hardware. Scalability from 250 users all the way up to a hundred thousand users can be accommodated easily.

Technical support can be hit and miss sometimes. You get like a first-year technician and you don't get the right person. It gets bounced around and eventually, it's either we fix it or somebody's smart enough to know what the issue is. If I was going to rate it from one to 10, say 10 is the best and one is worst, I'd rate it at 7.5 or so.

We've been doing implementations for a while now so for us the initial setup is straightforward. It becomes complex if a company is coming from a complex environment in the beginning, however, nowadays it's straightforward.

While planning, the first thing we do is an assessment and then we go to the design phase from the assessment on what the company has. Then, from the design phase, we designed the Azure infrastructure and do the implementation. The first thing is, of course, the identity. In general, deployment takes two or sometimes three months.

The initial investment is high due to the migration if you have a legacy environment like an on-premise Active Directory. However, after that initial investment, you're just paying for the license to hold your information and that has your Active Directory. There's a return on investment probably after few months. In that time, you'll get your money spent back due to the fact that you don't have to purchase a lot of hardware initially. The initial investment is really only to migrate your information or your data. That's where there are costs for a company usually.

It's offered as a service. We're using the latest version. We use it with various versions of the cloud (public, private, cloud). That said, a lot of the time the organization also has already some Active Directory on-premises, and that is something that we help out with in terms of bringing them to the cloud, to the Azure Active Directory.

I'd advise new users not to be afraid to go to the cloud. The cloud has a lot of benefits, including software as a service, SaaS applications. You don't have to worry about hardware updates, or maintaining a license for different applications. Just go start small. If you're worried, start as a hybrid, which is most of the time maybe 80%, 90%. You can go from lift and shift to Azure Active Directory. If you're a new company, just go right to the cloud. It's easy. You don't have the legacy infrastructure to worry about.

Going to the cloud is as secure as ever. I feel a lot of organizations when you go to the cloud, especially Azure Active Directory, think you're sharing a piece of a rack due to the fact that it's in the cloud with Azure companies. It is a bit more complicated than that. However, the security is there. Azure Active Directory and going into the cloud has been around for 13 years. It's no longer a new or scary subject.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. If they fixed little things like notifications and licensing issues, I would give them a perfect score.

We use it for the authentication of people in a hybrid configuration. In most cases,
Office 365 makes companies move to Azure Active Directory.

We have both on-premises and cloud deployments.

Its ability to provide secure connections to people at all locations is the most valuable. It is mostly used by enterprises.

The onboarding process for new users can be improved. It can be made simpler for people who have never registered to Azure AD previously and need to create an account and enable the MFA. The initial setup can be made simpler for non-IT people. 

It should be a bit simpler to use. Unless you get certifications, such as AZ-300 and AZ-301, it is not a simple thing to use at the enterprise scale.

I have been using this solution for four or five years.

I never use technical support. I usually find the information on my own or through my friends at Microsoft.

It is not complicated for me as an IT guy, but the feedback from the field or non-IT people is that it could be simpler.

MFA and P2 licenses for two Azures for fully-enabled scenarios and features cost a lot of money. This is where Okta is trying to get the prices down.

I have spent seven years at Microsoft, so I have a tendency to like Microsoft solutions because I know them and the philosophy behind them. Till now, Azure AD is probably the best solution for identity and security.

I also use Okta. For integration with Microsoft solutions, Office 365 Azure is just right. However, for some scenarios, such as consolidations, Okta seems to have a few advantages as compared to Active Directory. Okta also has a very interesting price.

I would rate Microsoft Azure Active Directory Premium an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution only for the employees. It offers a single sign-on to business applications. Internal modern applications also go through Azure Active Directory, however, we use Active Directory for the legacy ones. (Kerberos).

It takes a couple hours to add SSO to new business SaaS. The Azure AD Marketplace has all the applications we bought so far as built-in templates.

The single sign-on of the solution is the most valuable aspect.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The solution offers good bundles that include Office 365. 

The pricing is pretty decent.

The product is pretty user-friendly and offers good customization capabilities.

We find that most of the new features are in preview for too long. It gives you the announcement that there's a new feature and yet, most of the time, it takes more than one year to have it generally available. Often we have to go and sometimes just use a preview without support. 

We cannot run all the configurations from the APIs. I would like to have something that has code and to just be able to back up and apply my configuration. Right now, we are managing more Azure tenants. It's hard to keep all of those configurations at the same level, the same value.

We would like to have more granularity in the Azure conditional access in order to be able to manage more groups for applications. That way, when adding a new applications I don't have multiple conditional access to modify. 

One of the main requests from our security team is the MFA challenge. Azure, by default, is more user-friendly. We have a lot of debates with the security team here as the MFA doesn't pop up often enough for them. From an end-user perspective, it's a better user experience, as users generally prefer fewer pop-ups, however, security doesn't like it. It's hard for security to add. 

We don't have Azure Premium P2 yet, however, most of the advanced security features are in the P2, and it costs a lot more money.

I've been using the solution for four years at this point.

The solution is relatively stable. The only issue we have is that there's a lot of things on Azure that are synchronous. Sometimes it takes time for changes to apply, and it kind of depends on the time of the day. A lot of the time we're happy with it, however, sometimes it creates a bizarre issue that is difficult to troubleshoot.

The solution is quite stable. If an organization needs to expand it out, they can do so rather easily.

We have about 9,000 people in our organization using the solution.

While the technical support is good, you need premium support. The standard support is more for small enterprises. We have the premium support and with the premium support, it's much better. There's a direct line to the correct type of support. It's very good.

We previously used SiteMinder from Computer Associates. The main reason we migrated to Azure was for the integration with Office 365. It then became our primary authentication source for the employees.

The initial setup is not too complex. It's pretty straightforward.

We didn't need the assistance of an integrator, reseller or consultant for deployment. We were able to handle everything in-house.

The pricing is really great and Office 365 packages are good. We don't pay for it separately. It's included in our package and the APIs are really great. I'm not sure of the exact cost of Azure. It's a package deal.

We've looked into Okta for B2B and B2C clients, not necessarily for our internal employees.

We're just a customer.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

I would recommend the solution for employees. It's a really great tool. However, we tried it also for consumers, for clients for B2B and B2C. For me, it isn't really a great production product. We researched Okta for that.

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We are a software development company and solution provider, and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients.

This is an easy way to give users access to applications. I can share access with other organizations outside of our network.

This solution is easy to manage.

The ability to grant access to other organizations is helpful.

It integrates well with a large number of applications.

Microsoft needs to add a single setup, so whenever resources join the company or are leaving the company, all of the changes can be made with a single click.

I would like to see a secure, on-premises gateway that offers connectivity between the physical servers and the cloud. The capability already exists, but it is not secure enough when the setting is marked private.

I have been using Microsoft Azure Active Directory Premium for about a year.

In the time that I have been using Microsoft Azure, I haven't had any problem with stability.

This is the right platform if you are looking for scalability. We have more than 100,000 users.

We have not needed to use technical support. 

We have a couple of contacts in the Microsoft team, so we will reach out to them in case we have any questions.

I have recently been working with Okta, and I find that most organizations are moving toward it. With this in mind, I think that Microsoft has to take care, and consider why so many people are switching. The most important reason is the single setup. Once they set up Okta, it's easy for the organization.

I have been working in Microsoft Azure for a long time and I find the initial setup to be easy.

For maintenance, we have a team of 20 administrators and developers.

Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis and the cost depends on the number of users. There are no charges in addition to this.

The suitability of this solution depends on the technology and the environment at the organization. Many companies are still transitioning to the cloud, leaving part or all of their data on-premises. Ultimately, it depends on the data that they have and their preference or requirements for keeping it on-premises. In some cases, people want to move only non-private data to the cloud. All of these things have to be considered before implementing Azure Active Directory.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Microsoft Entra ID has made our organization more secure. 

The tool's most valuable feature is conditional access. 

The product needs to improve its support.

I have been working with the product for five years. 

Microsoft Entra ID is stable. 

The product needs to improve support. There are many steps before you get to someone who can solve the issues. 

Neutral

Microsoft Entra ID's deployment is easy. 

Microsoft Entra ID helps save money since you don't need a second MFA solution. I rate it a nine out of ten. 

I use the product for user policy and group management. 

The tool's most valuable feature is auto logs. It helps with user activity and monitoring. It also assists us with GLBA policies and procedures. Microsoft Entra ID gives a 360 view of what the user has access to, what applications are available to them, when they are logging in and out, etc. It makes knowing what is happening to our tenants incredibly powerful. 

I want to be able to identify the audiences effectively and manage them. 

I rate the product's stability a ten out of ten. 

I rate Microsoft Entra ID's scalability a ten out of ten. 

The tool's support is very responsive. 

Positive

We have seen ROI with the tool's use. 

Microsoft Entra ID's pricing is reasonable. 

Microsoft Entra ID is very transparent and easy to access. It is easy to understand, but you shouldn't get lost in the updates. 

The product has helped our IT administrators save time. We will be onboarding the HR team soon. 

My company is loyal to Microsoft products because of its consistency and flexibility. 

I rate the product a ten out of ten.