Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

Akamai and Microsoft are both solutions in the Access Management category. Akamai is ranked #22, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7. Akamai holds a 0.5% mindshare in AM, compared to Microsoft’s 27.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Akamai Enterprise Applicati...

Read 3 Akamai Enterprise Application Access reviews

208 Views
160 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Entra ID

Read 219 Microsoft Entra ID reviews

9,229 Views
6,874 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Akamai Enterprise Applicati...

Microsoft Entra ID

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

Akamai Enterprise Application Access and Microsoft Entra ID are compared to determine superiority in access management solutions. Microsoft Entra ID benefits from advanced feature sets while Akamai offers competitive pricing and superior customer service.

Features: Akamai Enterprise Application Access is strong in robust security, seamless access, and integration capabilities. Microsoft Entra ID offers advanced identity management, comprehensive compliance features, and an extensive range of tools.

Room for Improvement: Akamai could improve user documentation, reporting capabilities, and user guidance. Microsoft Entra ID needs simplification in initial setup, better analytics, and a more streamlined process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Akamai Enterprise Application Access is favored for straightforward deployment and responsive support. Microsoft Entra ID has a more complex deployment but benefits from robust customer service post-deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Akamai's pricing is competitive with quicker ROI. Microsoft Entra ID is pricier but offers extensive features that justify the cost with good long-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs. Microsoft Entra ID Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs. Microsoft Entra ID

March 2025

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Helped 842,592 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Akamai Enterprise Applicati...

Ranking in Access Management

22nd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (18th), ZTNA as a Service (21st), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (26th)

Microsoft Entra ID

Ranking in Access Management

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

219

Ranking in other categories

Single Sign-On (SSO) (1st), Authentication Systems (1st), Identity Management (IM) (1st), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Akamai Enterprise Application Access is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 27.8%, up from 24.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Access Management

Featured Reviews

Bill Lee

Cloud Architecture Consultant at Metaage

Very scalable, convenient, and stable protection against attacks

Our company uses the solution as a cloud perimeter and VPN. We don't need to use on-premises devices to open firewalls to inbound or outbound traffic. The solution is very convenient and stable because you don't have to worry about attacks to public IPs or public networks. The solution has two…

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Aaron Liang

System engineer at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees

Has significantly improved secure access to applications and resources in our environment

Microsoft Entra ID has helped by simplifying our management of permissions for APIs. We are not directly exposing credentials, as we use tokens instead. It has made management easier and more secure, especially in a multi-user environment. The implementation of Microsoft Entra ID significantly improved secure access to applications and resources in our environment, primarily through the widespread use of single-sign-on. Managing API permissions became much easier, as application registration often involves calling an API to utilize services without directly exposing credentials, relying instead on token-based authentication. This streamlined approach benefits end-users by simplifying access while remaining transparent to them. Ultimately, my role focuses on ensuring a smooth and user-friendly experience, even if the underlying technology remains unseen by the end-users. Our company strongly emphasizes passwordless authentication, primarily through device-bound passkeys in Microsoft Authenticator. While administrators with high-privileged accounts utilize YubiKeys and passwords for tasks like accessing Microsoft Graph, we are actively transitioning all other users towards passwordless methods such as Windows Hello biometrics. This approach streamlines authentication and enhances security. Though initial deployment in 2022 presented challenges due to hardware limitations and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the technology has significantly improved and provides a simple and effective user experience.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Application Access's most valuable feature is the accessibility of enterprise tech protection."

"The capability of Akamai Enterprise Application Access is what you're looking for, it's giving you the service that you're looking for. It's simple and doesn't use an agent. It uses LCSD responders, and they have a lot of services around the globe. That's the reason that we were very interested in using it because it has a lot of coverage. This is because it's under the GDS umbrella."

"The solution is very convenient and stable because you don't have to worry about attacks to public IPs or public networks."

"Azure Active Directory has useful policy assigning and management."

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

"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."

"Azure Active Directory provides us with identity-based authentication, which secures access at the user level and also integrates with conditional access policies and multi-factor authentication helping to increase the identity security for that person. So, the hacking and leaking of passwords is a secondary problem because you will not authenticate a person with one factor. There is a second factor of authentication available to increase the security premise for your company."

"Azure Active Directory features have helped improve our security posture. The remote working has been a massive help during the pandemic."

"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."

"Personally, I'm a great fan of Azure Active Directory due to the security and compliance features that are there in the classic or default Azure Active Directory."

"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."

More Microsoft Entra ID pros

Cons

"The solution has two agents so should combine its enterprise application and security access into one agent."

"The technical enablement sessions are quite limited, and Akamai could help by providing more of them."

"We need another approach to bring the solution to the cloud. In addition to Access Management, we would like to see if we can jump into Directories. I think ADs are going to go away and everything is going to be cloud-based and minimize the use of ADs because of the cost and some other dependencies to the cloud. Every time you buy AD it is more hardware, and everything's changing to software. The network's changing, the applications are changing, and for IT it is hard to keep up with it."

"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."

"One area where it can improve is connectivity with other systems. Not all systems are connected and you have to do coding to establish a point of connectivity. It supports certain vendors and it supports certain protocols. It is limited in many other aspects at the attribute level."

"Some systems do not integrate very well with Azure AD. We thought of going for Okta, but later on we were able to achieve it, but not the way we wanted. It was not as easy as we thought it would be. The integration was not very seamless."

"The thing that is a bit annoying is the inability to nest groups. Because we run an Azure hybrid model, we have nested groups on-premise which does not translate well. So, we have written some scripts to kind of work around that. This is a feature request that we have put in previously to be able to use a group that is nested in Active Directory on-premise and have it handled the same way in Azure."

"Microsoft Entra ID could benefit from more fine-tuned rights. It is necessary to prevent granting an application or user broad access rights."

"Microsoft has so many different requirements and priorities that sometimes they don't invest all their energy into the products that you have expectations to investigate."

"Customers want to know exactly where they are spending their money, allowing them to assess and potentially save money in those specific areas."

"Documentation I think is always the worst part with what Azure's doing right now across the board."

More Microsoft Entra ID cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is great it is all-inclusive, they use an enterprise cost model. That's what we like compared to other users. This is one of the main attractions of Akamai Enterprise Application Access. It's already an enterprise cost model established with us for services."

"Licensing is based on user count."

"The license can be shared based on the number of active users."

"It is good. We have Office 365 E3, and then that is tied in with Azure Active Directory. I believe that we only have to pay for our technician-level access or IT department access for Azure Active Directory Premium, which I am sure they call Entra Premium P2 licensing, so it is not a very large cost. We just adopted that, and that gives us a lot of insights into user security that we would not otherwise have."

"Microsoft is so expensive. You know it is expensive when a Fortune 100 company like ours is complaining about the cost. That has been a big thing for me. When I really want to use an Azure service, it is very hard for me to justify the cost, especially with Microsoft support."

"Licensing is easy."

"Licensing fees are paid monthly."

"Azure Active Directory is expensive."

"I think the pricing is efficient, but the licensing is overly complicated and difficult to understand. There are many tricks in the licensing that weigh against us."

"Microsoft Azure AD has P1 or P2 licensing options, and it depends on the customer's needs. To use Conditional Access, you need to have the P1 license, and to use the PIN features, you need the P2 license."

"We have an agreement with Microsoft, and my company pays yearly."

More Microsoft Entra ID pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

33%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?

We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...

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What do you like most about Azure Active Directory?

It is very simple. The Active Directory functions are very easy for us. Its integration with anything is very easy. We can easily do third-party multifactor authentication.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?

We are an enterprise customer with an enterprise agreement in place with many of our partner companies, so there are no special questions or issues about pricing, setup cost, or licensing.

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Product Reports

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Akamai Enterprise Application Access report

Download Akamai Enterprise Application Access product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Entra ID

March 2025

Download Microsoft Entra ID product report

Also Known As

Soha

Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Akamai

Microsoft

Overview

Akamai Enterprise Application Access is a cloud-based solution that provides secure access to enterprise applications and data from any device, anywhere. It eliminates the need for traditional VPNs and allows organizations to easily manage access to applications and data for employees, partners, and customers. With its zero-trust approach, it ensures that only authorized users can access sensitive information, reducing the risk of data breaches.

Akamai

Microsoft Entra ID is used for extending on-premises Active Directory to the cloud, managing application access, enabling multi-factor authentication, and single sign-on. It facilitates policy enforcement and secure access, ensuring centralized identity management across cloud and on-premises resources.

Organizations utilize Microsoft Entra ID for robust user and group management, identity synchronization, and conditional access. Its seamless integration with third-party apps, scalability, and support for remote work make it a preferred choice. The admin center streamlines identity and access tasks, enhancing efficiency and security with features like privileged identity management and audit logs.

What are the key features of Microsoft Entra ID?

Single Sign-On: Simplifies user access to multiple applications with one login.
Multifactor Authentication: Enhances security by requiring additional verification.
Conditional Access: Establishes policies that determine how users' access cloud apps.
Integration: Easily integrates with various third-party applications.
User Identity Protection: Safeguards user identities from threats.
Privileged Identity Management: Manages elevated access to sensitive resources.
Audit Logs: Provides thorough activity logs for oversight and compliance.

What benefits should users look for in Microsoft Entra ID reviews?

Enhanced Security: Offers strong multifactor authentication and identity protection.
Administrative Efficiency: Simplifies identity and access management tasks.
Scalability: Supports growing user bases and remote work environments.
Integration Capabilities: Compatible with numerous third-party applications.
User-Friendly Interface: Makes managing user identities straightforward.

Microsoft Entra ID implementation varies across industries. Tech firms leverage it for secure, scalable access management, while healthcare organizations utilize its identity protection features to safeguard patient data. Educational institutions adopt Entra ID for streamlined user management and policy enforcement, ensuring secure access for students and staff across on-premises and cloud resources.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Bugcrowd, InPowered, Spirent Communications

Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs. Microsoft Entra ID

March 2025

Free Report: Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs. Microsoft Entra ID

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs. Microsoft Entra ID and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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