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Microsoft Entra ID vs One Identity Active Roles comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Entra ID
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
218
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), Access Management (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (4th)
One Identity Active Roles
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (5th), Active Directory Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Microsoft Entra ID and One Identity Active Roles aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Microsoft Entra ID is designed for Single Sign-On (SSO) and holds a mindshare of 29.7%, up 28.5% compared to last year.
One Identity Active Roles, on the other hand, focuses on User Provisioning Software, holds 6.3% mindshare, up 6.1% since last year.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
User Provisioning Software
 

Featured Reviews

Vinod Survase - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves us time and money and features Conditional Access policies, SSPR, and MFA
I want better integration between Azure AD and the on-prem environment because there are currently limitations that can hamper employee experience. We use a feature called password writeback, that can be challenging to implement in a hybrid environment. Employees can change their passwords using a self-service password reset (SSPR) feature, which reflects from the cloud to the on-prem identity, but not the other way around. Currently, there is no way to reflect passwords from on-prem identities to the cloud. There are other similar limitations, such as a cap on the number of identities that can be synchronized in a particular time frame, which can be an issue for large enterprises with 300,000 employees or more.
JosephChandrasekaram - PeerSpot reviewer
Single interface and workflows simplify AD and Azure AD management efficiency and security
The most valuable features include * auditing * dynamic grouping * creating dynamic groups based on AD attributes. Also, as part of the cloud identity, meaning expanding identity to the cloud, it gives me a single workflow to expand on-prem. I can create a user in the cloud and give them access to resources through a single workflow. And for regulatory, auditing, and security requirements, it's critical that the solution enables Zero Trust security with hybrid AD fine delegation and role-based access control.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It offers good Microsoft integration capabilities."
"The solution adds an extra layer of security."
"Using [Azure AD's] passwordless technology, you're not even using a password anymore. You're basically just creating a logon request without actually sending or typing or storing the password. This is awesome for any user, regardless of whether you're a factory worker or a CFO. It's secure and super-simple."
"The identity and access management piece is probably the most valuable to us."
"It's definitely both stable and scalable."
"It is one of those costs where you can't really quantify a return on investment. In the grand scheme of things, if we didn't have it, we would probably have a lot more breaches. It would be a lot harder to detect issues because we would have people using static usernames and passwords for various sites, making us open to a lot more attacks. The amount of security and benefit that we get out of it is not quantifiable but the return of investment from a qualitative point of view is much higher than not having it."
"The most valuable features of this solution are security, the conditional access feature, and multifactor authentication."
"The ability to offer employees access to any platform, including private PCs and tablets, has been a game-changer."
"Having a tool to manage all changes to AD from a single pane of glass is awesome."
"Active Roles improved the management of users, groups, and AD objects in the organization."
"It provides automatic provisioning/update/deprovisioning workflows from a source system to a target system."
"In comparison to native Active Directory tools, using Active Roles for delegation is so much better. It uses an access template and that makes it easy to see who can access what. In fact, you can do that for many objects as well."
"Instead of deleting accounts, we like the deprovision option so that we can reverse any accidental deletions. It also gives a higher level of quality control in terms of enforcing any number of variables, such as making sure that an account has a description entered before the account can be created. We can backtrack and know the history of it that way."
"It's valuable to us in that it resembles the native tools that most people have grown accustomed to... Active Roles resembles traditional tools, such as from Microsoft. That is really good because it eases the way people interact with the tool."
"The best part of this Active Roles is the workflow engine. It features an industry-leading workflow automation feature. It's a visual PowerShell that allows task interruption."
"Secure access is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"The cost of licensing always has room for improvement."
"The response from actual support tickets is a bit laggy, and I would like them to be more responsive."
"The product could be more cost-effective."
"The solution could be cheaper."
"Something that can be improved is their user interface"
"The solution can improve the educational portion because it is an administration cost."
"From time to time it takes a little bit of time to replicate, with some of the applications—something like five to 10 minutes. I know that the design is not supposed to enable real-time replication with some of the applications. But, as an administrator, I would like to run a specific change or modification in Azure Active Directory and see it replicated almost immediately."
"ESAE management, especially the admin tools, could be improved. It should be built in by the vendor, and I shouldn't have to add patches or updates to connect to my domain directly. It should be added by default. The price could be better."
"The ability to send logs to a SIEM would be very beneficial."
"In terms of improvement, it could be made even more user-friendly for administrators when they need to create new workflows and rule sets."
"It's a fairly stable product but not perfectly reliable."
"Most of the time it just works."
"For the AAD management feature, it needs to improve the objects that we can manage and the security."
"When doing a workflow, we would like a bit better feedback on the screen, as we're trying to get it to work. For example, there is a "Find" function that you need set up in a workflow to do some of the automation. It is not the easiest to get a result from those finds when you're trying to do that. In the MMC, they have a couple different types of workflows. In this particular case, we use their workflow functionality to find all of X within the environment, then if you find it, do X, Y, and Z. You can have multiple steps. When you do that search function within that workflow, it's really hard to find out, "Is my search working?" It would be nice if there was some feedback on the screen so you could see if your search is working properly within the workflow."
"The third area for improvement, which is the weakest portion of ARS, is the workflow engine, which was introduced a few years ago. It's slow and not very intuitive to use, so I would like to see improvement there."
"The way you can search groups could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We are working with the Premium P2 licenses, which are reasonable. If you invest in the on-premises environment setup, then it costs so much. However, on-prem AD gives you the ability to manage your organization in a very organized manner, where you can create a group policy."
"We don't really have a choice. It's the one shop in town. If you want this, you have to pay for it."
"Azure has an educational package available for students with a variety of licenses and different software available."
"I'm not totally aware of the pricing and licensing, but I do know that the pricing and licensing must be quite balanced. We are a pretty old client of Microsoft, and MSA is just one of the services we use from Microsoft. There's a whole Microsoft 365 suite that's implemented as well. I'm sure it is something that is acceptable to both parties."
"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 are currently on the education plan, so the price is slightly better than the development plan."
"We make sure that we only enable the licenses that are needed for the users, rather than enabling licenses in a blanket fashion."
"The pricing is on the higher end."
"It's fairly priced."
"The pricing for Active Roles is expensive but not as expensive as other solutions like Okta."
"It's expensive."
"The price is reasonable. It costs us about 1 million Danish kroner annually, and we also spend about half as much on consultants."
"The licensing model is a simple user-based model, not that much complicated."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
32%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?
Most features of Entra ID are part of Microsoft's ecosystem and included in Microsoft 365 bundles, which means there are no additional costs associated with pricing and licensing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for One Identity Active Roles?
The pricing for Active Roles is expensive but not as expensive as other solutions like Okta.
What needs improvement with One Identity Active Roles?
Active Roles can fix many little problems that have never been resolved and have lingered for years, continuing to annoy people. For example, you can't search by object GUIDs. The manual says you c...
 

Also Known As

Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator
Quest Active Roles
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.
City of Frankfurt, Moore Public Schools, George Washington University, Transavia Airlines, Howard County, MD. See all stories at OneIdentity.com/casestudies
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Entra ID vs. One Identity Active Roles and other solutions. Updated: March 2020.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.