Microsoft Entra ID Reviews

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the data center's on-premises, it is very hard for them to bring all of their users into VPN and some of them there are outdated and they can't really accommodate the number of users that are working from home.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.

Most of my customers use Active Directory Premium for condition and access scenarios that they need to comply with my conditions to access my resources. They also build new environments, virtual machines, and some other products like SQL on the infrastructure as a service. There are some customers that use Microsoft Intune, which is mobile device management. Microsoft Intune is a cloud.

The most valuable feature is that it is very easy to implement, you don't need a lot of effort to set up the solution. This is the most advantageous point, that you can do anything on Azure without taking too much time.

Microsoft has a feedback page, in which if anyone has any suggestions or feedback, you can send them to them. They have all of the technical resources available on the internet, on their website. In case you need the support, you can easily open a ticket with them because you already have a subscription and you are eligible to open a ticket.

I've been working with Active Directory for twelve years. I have experience with Microsoft Active Directory Virtualization like Hyper-V systems in the family for Microsoft. So, this is a 12-year journey, it has been 12 years of experience with this product.

It's currently on-premise but because of COVID, a lot of our clients are moving to the cloud. 

I have contacted technical support many times for the cloud. They are good. But for on-prem, they have recently started becoming delayed. Maybe the technical resources are not very good. I know Microsoft, they are focusing on the cloud solutions more than the on-premise solutions. The support for on-premises has become not as at previous times. But for cloud solutions, they are good.

The initial setup complexity is based on the scenario. If it's infrastructure as a service where you are building VMs, it could take you one day to complete your setup for virtual machines. 

Whether or not I would recommend this solution, would depend on the users' needs. If their use cases fit what Microsoft provides, then I would recommend it. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. The price plays a factor in the rating. Customers are not oriented with a cloud solution, they move forward very slowly towards the cloud, because maybe in my country big sectors, like the banking sectors, don't deal with the cloud. So customers see this and don't want to use the cloud either. They fear for their security and privacy. Although Microsoft assures that they protect their customer's data and privacy.

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. 

We use the solution for single sign-on. 

The product is easy to use. 

Microsoft Entra ID should improve workload identities. It should set conditional access. 

I have been using the product for six years. 

My company has 5000 end users. I rate the product's scalability a nine out of ten. 

The tool's support is not good. However, the documentation is good. 

Negative

The tool's deployment is easy. 

We relied on two resources for deployment. 

I have seen ROI with the tool's use. 

The solution was fairly priced the last time I checked the costs. 

Microsoft Entra ID has helped us save money. It also helped us save 70 percent of the time. I rate it a nine out of ten. 

We use Azure AD for sign-on security as well as for our customers' Microsoft 365 solutions. We help migrate our customers from the traditional Active Directory, and to use Exchange Online and Microsoft Teams. We use Azure AD to secure their login processes with multi-factor authentication. In some specific cases, where there are specific applications, databases, or Active Directory login information about users, we integrate Azure AD with those elements.

Multi-factor authentication really secures our environments and gives us the flexibility to use location-based policies. Azure AD also gives us a lot of flexibility in our scope of integration.

It's easy to configure Microsoft products with Azure AD. It is almost an instant integration. In hybrid installations it is a bit more complex to configure, but not that much. In short, it is good for most Microsoft customers and the products they use.

Some of the features related to authentication could be made clearer. In my last organization, I tried to integrate a third-party education solution with Azure AD, but it was a bit difficult to configure. I would like it to be easier to integrate third-party applications.

I have been using Azure AD for three or four years.

It's a stable product. I haven't encountered any problems or bugs.

The solution is very scalable.

In general, there is no problem in configuring Azure AD. It's not hard. But, as I said, configuring third-party, open-source applications with it is a little bit difficult.

We usually set aside one day to configure Azure AD for new organizations. In general, it takes one person to maintain it, perhaps two in some cases.

We have faced a few little problems in our customers' hybrid environments. Backing up the ADFS (Active Directory Federation Services) is very important, but some of our customers didn't do so and they lost their ADFS proxy servers. That is one of the important lessons I have learned. In those cases we had to reconfigure almost everything. It's simple to back up ADFS, so I would advise doing so.

But from the user's point of view, we've faced no problems. It works well.