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Jeff Woltz - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Real User
It allows us to issue a single credential to every employee and not worry about managing a lot of passwords
Pros and Cons
  • "Azure AD allowed us to get rid of servers and other hardware running at our offices. We moved everything to the cloud. Once we set up roles and permissions, it's only a matter of adding people and removing people from different groups and letting permissions flow through."
  • "I would like to see a better delegation of access. For instance, we want to allow different groups within the company to manage different elements of Azure AD, but I need more granularity in delegating access."

What is our primary use case?

Azure AD manages the identities of all our employees. 

How has it helped my organization?

Azure AD allowed us to get rid of servers and other hardware that run at our offices. We moved everything to the cloud. Once we set up roles and permissions, it's only a matter of adding people and removing people from different groups and letting permissions flow through. 

It also saved us some money. Our IT group is tiny, so any automation we can do is valuable. We haven't had to grow the team beyond three. The employee reaction to Microsoft Entra has been positive. People like to have a single credential for accessing all our Microsoft and non-Microsoft apps.

What is most valuable?

I like Azure AD's single sign-on and identity federation features. It allows us to issue a single credential to every employee and not worry about managing a lot of passwords. Microsoft Entra provides a single pane of glass for managing user access, and we're pleased with it.

Entra's conditional access feature enables us to set policies up based on the location and risk score of the account and the device they use to access the network. Permission management lets us assign roles for various Azure functions based on functions people perform in the company. It helps us bundle access to different things by associating it with a given role at the company.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see a better delegation of access. For instance, we want to allow different groups within the company to manage different elements of Azure AD, but I need more granularity in delegating access.

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June 2025
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For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using Azure AD for 10 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate Azure AD nine out of ten for stability. They've had issues in the past, but it's been quite some time. It has been nearly two years since the last availability problem.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We only have 100 employees at the company, so we're nowhere near the maximum limits. I know of a massive company that adopted Azure AD. I imagine it's scalable well beyond the size of our company.

How are customer service and support?

The support is decent. I always manage to find what I'm looking for. If it's not in the documentation, there are lots of blog posts that third parties have written, and I always seem to find what I need. I rate Microsoft support nine out of ten. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used the on-premises version of Active Directory, but we switched to the cloud to get rid of all of our hardware. We don't run any servers in the officer anymore. 

How was the initial setup?

Setting up Azure AD was straightforward. It's all delivered online, so it's only a matter of filling in the parameters for our organization. After that point, it scales easily.

There's no traditional maintenance. We have to perform audits on accounts to ensure that people and permissions are still online. There isn't product or data maintenance. 

What was our ROI?

Azure AD is essential to how the business runs. We're only investing more in the whole Microsoft Suite.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We're a Microsoft partner, so we get partner benefits. We pay almost nothing, and it's massively valuable to us.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We didn't look at anything else because we're committed to Office 365, and we need to be on Active Directory for Office 365. It's a well-known, trusted solution so we never did an analysis of alternatives.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Azure Active Directory nine out of ten. I'm sure there are some areas for improvement, but it's extremely valuable to us and the way that we operate.

Since we began to use Active Directory, I've learned a lot about industry best practices, particularly digital identity and its role in zero trust. By using a major mainstream identity provider, we're able to move toward the whole zero-trust model that's popular right now.

If you implement Azure AD, you need to consider the third-party apps you want to integrate. If they support competitors like Okta, Ping, and SailPoint, then they will almost certainly support Azure AD legacy applications. However, older software applications don't integrate well with Azure AD. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. partner
PeerSpot user
IT Specialist at Global Biotech Products
Real User
Top 5
Improves security and is easy to use for admins
Pros and Cons
  • "The security features, multi-factor authentication, and service management features are valuable."
  • "One thing that they need to improve is the cost."

What is our primary use case?

We use it as the Active Directory on the cloud. We have the systems on-premises and on the cloud. We connect the AD data to Azure. We have a single sign-on service on multi-cloud. We use the single sign-on feature on, for example, AWS.

In terms of the version, we use it as a service, and it is always updated to the latest version. 

How has it helped my organization?

Microsoft Entra ID helps to synchronize information from on-premise Active Directory. There are security features such as multifactor authentication. We can also use a single sign-on to connect with the other application on the cloud. 

It helps our admins to have more security. It is helpful for authentication methods, log checking, and audit trails in case of security concerns. However, it has not saved them time.

Microsoft Entra ID has not helped to save our organization money, but it helps to improve security.

What is most valuable?

The security features, multi-factor authentication, and service management features are valuable.

Microsoft Entra ID provides a single pane of glass for managing user access. Its menus are properly categorized, and they make it easy to use for our work and processes.

What needs improvement?

One thing that they need to improve is the cost. It already has a lot of features, but more protection of the identity would be beneficial for customers.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. In our environment, we mostly have Microsoft solutions such as Microsoft 365, email, OneDrive, SharePoint, Power Apps, etc. Entra ID is deployed across multiple locations for multiple users. We have a Microsoft 365 license for all employees. We have two admins who take care of configuration and monitoring for security and data loss prevention. 

We have plans to increase its usage.

How are customer service and support?

I have not contacted their support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use any other similar solution previously.

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved in its deployment. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is costly.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others. Overall, I would rate Microsoft Entra ID an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
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reviewer2165679 - PeerSpot reviewer
Platform Enterprise Cloud Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
It has robust automation capabilities and integrates well with other solutions
Pros and Cons
  • "Azure Active Directory has many automation capabilities, and you can apply policies on top. You can do a lot of things with these combinations and integrate other tools like PingFederate."
  • "Azure AD could be more robust and adopt a saturated model, where they can offer unlimited support for a multi-cloud environment."

What is our primary use case?

We sync up our on-premise Active Directory with Azure AD and use it for app registration. All of our cloud-based DevOps activities use Azure Active Directory.

How has it helped my organization?

Azure Active Directory has many automation capabilities, and you can apply policies on top. You can do a lot of things with these combinations and integrate other tools like PingFederate. We've likely saved some money, but I don't know how much. 

The solution has made our environment more controlled and robust. At the same time, functions become more challenging for users when you add more controls and multi-factor authentication. However, these measures are essential when you're dealing with a complex environment that crosses multiple regions and cloud platforms. 

What is most valuable?

I like Azure Active Directory's integration with GT Nexus, and it improves our overall security. Azure AD enables us to manage user access from a single pane of glass. We use single sign-on and multifactor authentication. Teams are required to have Authenticator downloaded on their devices. 

We use Azure AD's conditional access feature to fine-tune access controls and implement a zero-trust policy using authentication tokens. The calling application needs to verify those tokens. The tokens contain information that the application needs to verify. Every application or user needs to be registered in the system to access it.

In Azure AD, applications either use the managed identity or ARBAC for permission control, and we use SaaS on top of that. Policies can be used if there is anything else infrastructure or access-related. 

Permission management works the same way across all cloud platforms. You can have granular or course-grade permissions. It depends on what you want to use and how you want to use it. I'm on Azure, so I know how they use it. 

What needs improvement?

Azure AD could be more robust and adopt a saturated model, where they can offer unlimited support for a multi-cloud environment.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Azure AD for two years. 

How are customer service and support?

I rate Microsoft's support a nine out of ten. We are preferred partners, so we get high-priority support. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What other advice do I have?

I rate Azure Active Directory an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Amir Rashid - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager IS at Hilton PHarma
Real User
Provides fine-tuned and adaptive access controls from a single pane of glass
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is Conditional Access, and we use it extensively."
  • "We previously used Microsoft's technical support, which was excellent; they were very responsive. Now, we use a CSP, and their support is lacking, so I rate them five out of ten."

What is our primary use case?

We use Azure AD to implement conditional access when using Microsoft Network (MSN) services. Our infrastructure is primarily on-prem, and we operate our email in a hybrid environment and use the solution for continuity between our on-prem and cloud landscapes.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution improved our organization, especially in terms of security control. Overall, we're 65-70% satisfied with the product.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is Conditional Access, and we use it extensively.

Azure AD provides a single pane of glass for managing user access; we integrated multiple APIs and use single sign-on for all of our Microsoft products. I can't speak in universal terms, but we had some positive feedback from our users regarding user experience.  

We use the Conditional Access feature to enforce fine-tuned and adaptive access controls, an excellent feature we use to enhance the security of all the machines connected to our domain. Users cannot access long-term data, data from untrusted devices, or data on connected personal devices.  

We use Azure AD Verified ID, which is a good feature for privacy and control of identity data; it offers a good level of secrecy. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using the solution for over six years now. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product is stable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability isn't an issue; it depends on our license.

How are customer service and support?

We previously used Microsoft's technical support, which was excellent; they were very responsive. Now, we use a CSP, and their support is lacking, so I rate them five out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward, and a partner was present to assist us during the implementation. We have around 250 users, and the solution doesn't require any maintenance.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The product's price is in the midrange. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate the solution eight out of ten. 

Azure AD helped to save some time for our IT admins but not for our HR department, as they don't currently have access to the tool.

I recommend the product to those considering it, though it depends on the use case and requirements. If Azure AD has featured you don't need, then going with one of the cheaper competitors could be a better option.   

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Selvakumar B - PeerSpot reviewer
Program Manager at Cyqurex Systems Ltd
Real User
Gives me a single pane of glass view of all users, their last activity and when they logged in
Pros and Cons
  • "Single sign-on is the reason we use AD."
  • "Maybe there could be a dashboard view for Active Directory with some pie or bar charts on who is logged in, who is not logged in, and on the activity of each user for the past few days: whether they're active or not active."

What is our primary use case?

We use Office 365 for our emails and Office. As part of that, we have Active Directory on the cloud. We want to safeguard things, keeping in mind the recent upsurge in cyber attacks.

How has it helped my organization?

I get a single pane of glass view of all the users. I know who has been registered, who has joined, what their last activity was, and when they logged in. If I extend it, I can purchase Intune from Microsoft and I'll be able to do mobile data management.

What is most valuable?

Single sign-on is the reason we use AD.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see a better user interface. Right now, it's not that great. Maybe there could be a dashboard view for Active Directory with some pie or bar charts on who is logged in, who is not logged in, and on the activity of each user for the past few days: whether they're active or not active.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's definitely stable, a 10 out of 10.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are a small company so it is scalable, seamlessly. We don't even have 100 users, so we don't have any issues with scalability.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were previously using Gmail, which didn't have anything of this sort, so we moved to Office 365 which has Azure AD. We have joined the domain controller using Azure AD now.

How was the initial setup?

We were not involved in any deployment. It was automatic. The moment we signed in, we were part of Azure. It was straightforward. We just purchased our license, logged in, and we were automatically onboarded to Active Directory seamlessly.

It doesn't require any maintenance. It's managed by Microsoft.

What was our ROI?

There is a return on investment for us with Azure AD.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Azure AD comes with Office 365, so we are just paying for the Office 365 license.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate other options because Azure AD seems to be the market leader.

What other advice do I have?

Azure AD is one place where you can manage all users and devices and it's safe and secure.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Andrew Kolyvas - PeerSpot reviewer
Director and Founder at Nuage Solutions Australia
Real User
Good access control, more efficient administrative process, and helps with complex compliance obligations
Pros and Cons
  • "Privileged Identity Management and Privileged Identity Management make controlling access considerably easier and ensure that authorized access is achieved."
  • "They should put the features of P1 and P2 into a single license."

What is our primary use case?

I have come to depend upon Azure AD as my go-to identity management tool. Almost all businesses today use a Microsoft cloud-based product in some form or another, and integration in Azure AD ensures consistency, compliance, and simplified integration across the enterprise.

Additionally, we use many of the built-in security enhancements and features offered by the solution. Single sign-on and other integrations into a range of line-of-business software applications add to the many use cases available through Azure AD. Along with securely extending the on-premises environment to the hybrid state.

How has it helped my organization?

The key improvements to our organization are:

1. A singular control plane is enabling a more efficient administrative process.
2. RBAC simplifies role access providing a simpler approach to zero trust.
3. Onboarding and offboarding extend to every integrated application meaning that compliance is maintained.
4. PIM and PAM: Privileged Identity Management and Privileged Identity Management make controlling access considerably easier and ensure that authorized access is achieved.

With so many features available out of the box, it is difficult to adequately summarise in the space provided here.

What is most valuable?

I find that integration of enterprise applications outside of Microsoft via OATH and SAML is by far one of the most valuable features as it makes software distribution and access simpler and, with SSO enablement, ensures a lower threat surface from end users.

Azure boasts 90 compliance certifications, and this exceeds that of its competitors. With the compliance manager resource, you can control the company’s compliance tasks from one place.

The tool helps you meet complex compliance obligations. For example, you can undertake continuous risk examinations, provide an outlook on your company’s status and provide opportunities for improvement as needed.

With Azure Advisor and the Secure Score continually assessing your security and compliance posture, there is less need for highly paid security engineers. Especially when considering the size of the Microsoft security operations team also monitoring significant portions of the client environment.

What needs improvement?

It's really difficult to speak to this. The product is constantly undergoing feature enhancement and enrichment, and anything I would like to see coming is already available for public review.

Azure Active Directory is an easy-to-deploy, robust unified identity and access solution that securely extends your existing on-premise infrastructure to the cloud and provides seamless integration for in-house applications and 3rd party SaaS platforms. Granular policy-driven access controls ensure that access is granted only to authorized identities and devices and from approved locations. Azure AD includes an array of security and compliance options to ensure your business governance is adhered to without impacting productivity.

If I had to pick one, it would be to put the features of P1 and P2 into a single license.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Azure AD for approximately seven years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The platform is not without its occasional hiccups, however, in general, it is stable and issue-free.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There are few other identity options available with the scale made available by Azure AD.

How are customer service and support?

Support is hit-and-miss. Some days you'll get someone amazing who has the right knowledge and is willing to go beyond to help. And then there are the other times when help isn't forthcoming.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The initial configuration is simple. The configuration process is guided so that even a non-technical person can successfully complete the onboarding.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. My company is a Microsoft Cloud Solutions Provider partner. We exclusively offer Microsoft cloud products and services to our Managed Services Clients.
PeerSpot user
BENDER BENEDICT - PeerSpot reviewer
L3 Technical Support Engineer at SV Gaming Limited
Real User
Creates ease of use for the user; saves time for the organization
Pros and Cons
  • "I would say that Azure AD's pricing is very reasonable because of the structure and in terms of the solution."
  • "I would like to see Microsoft communicate how they intend to manage legacy applications. Right now, you still have to deploy a hosted domain server (which comes at an extra cost) if you have a legacy application that cannot sync properly with the enterprise applications and the modern applications."

What is our primary use case?

We use Azure AD to manage users in terms of user accounts and profiles. We also use it to manage applications, access control, and application management.

How has it helped my organization?

Azure AD has helped improve the onboarding and offboarding process, especially with the user provisioning and SSO. With Azure AD, once a user account is created, the user automatically gets synced across all of our applications without the admin having to touch each application once at a time.

The solution helped improve our onboarding process by saving us a lot of time.

What is most valuable?

The feature I have found the most valuable is user provisioning (SSO). Azure Active Directory provides a single pane of glass for managing use cases. 

How it works is once it has all been set up, it allows the user to use the same credential – the username and password – across multiple applications. It creates ease of use for the user as they don't have to keep entering a username and password across multiple applications.

Azure AD allows us to manage the users' access from a single point. In a typical environment, if, for example, a user exits the company and the account needs to be disabled, you would have to go across each application to disable that access. With the Microsoft experience, you just have to disable it from the Azure Active Directory, and then it syncs across all of the applications. Once the account is disabled on the Azure, the accounts are disabled on all applications. The user instantly loses access across all applications without the admin having to go to each application one at a time. When you are offboarding an exited user or an employee that leaves the organization, there's no room for error in terms of missing out or forgetting to revoke an access for a particular application.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see Microsoft communicate how they intend to manage legacy applications. Right now, you still have to deploy a hosted domain server (which comes at an extra cost) if you have a legacy application that cannot sync properly with the enterprise applications and the modern applications.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Azure Active Directory for about five years now. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Azure is stable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Azure is scalable. 

How are customer service and support?

Microsoft's tech support is very responsive and really supportive. They will work with you if you have any concerns or if you have any issues. They have experts that will be able to jump on a call with you and assist you in making sure that whatever your concerns are, they all get resolved.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I did not previously use a different solution. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial deployment was straightforward for me because I already had a pretty good experience managing the on-prem Active Directory. The deployment of the directory itself does not take long. However, it took us about a couple of months to carry out the user creation, create the Conditional Access policies, and to test. You have to test your policies before you go live. We had a lot of design to do in terms of setup, testing, rollout, and setup for each feature that we needed to implement. We had more of a test phase before the go-live phase. That's why it took quite a while. 

What about the implementation team?

We did our deployment in-house. We had three people on the deployment. 

What was our ROI?

We have seen a return on investment from Azure AD because, first of all, we have been able to use the Cloud infrastructure to bring in more response. Also, it has high availability. We can easily scale it up or down, thereby managing costs. Now, in terms of the Azure Active Directory Office 365, we also have scale licenses where we get to manage the licenses across multiple users, thereby reducing costs of having to purchase one per user.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I would say that Azure AD's pricing is very reasonable because of the structure and in terms of the solution. I can offer this tip for the licensing: if you plan on going to a CSV, you can get a certain level of discounts.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at Google Workspace when we were trying to migrate from on-prem to the cloud. At the end of the day, after analyzing and comparing most of the features that we are going to go with and how it will integrate with our existing system, we found the Microsoft Azure Active Directory to be more effective and better suited to our requirements.

This is how Azure AD stacks up against Okta. Okta is a third-party application for syncing user profiles from on-prem to cloud. However, Microsoft already has a pretty good application for that, which is Azure's AD Connect. It's more or less the same thing as Okta and more effective in the sense that with AD Connect we can actually get to query the user objects in terms of all the attributes to work on-prem and on the Cloud, just the same way you probably do it if you run an LDAP query. This is something you might not get with Okta because of the integration with the Active Directory.

What other advice do I have?

My advice to someone looking to implement the solution is: your in-house technical support needs to understand the technology and your requirements as an organization because Azure is very robust. You need to know exactly what you intend to deploy and the requirements you intend or need. If you have that covered, Azure AD will be simple and straightforward to use. If you are able to plan and manage the users and services, it is really cost-effective.

I have identified that Azure Active Directory has a lot of features that are handy and useful. Microsoft is also constantly improving on it and it has all the required features that my organization requires. 

Azure AD is helpful and user friendly when it comes to managing identity and access tasks. It helps you manage that effectively because you have all the clouds, you have profile creation, you have all the features. Everything is easy to locate and simple to navigate.

Azure AD allows us to improve compliance for enforcing fine-tuned and adaptive access controls. It also allows us to manage access to all the applications in our environment. With it, we can create design policies that either the leader or the identify side from HR has to comply with before a particular user gains access into our environment or into a particular service within our environment.

We use Entra's Conditional Access feature in conjunction with Microsoft Endpoint Manager. We do so because one part allows for full control in the endpoint for managing access on the user and that user as an object, and then the other manages the device as an object.

This combination has the ability to reduce the risk of unpatched devices connecting to your corporate network. It will prevent a user from accessing an environment or a service space via a compromised device. If a user, for example, tries to access our network, service, or environment, via a compromised personal device, this combination will help prevent that kind of intrusion. Also, if a corporate authorized device gets compromised, that's when we find out the device is authorized to access that environment. It also helps to manage and restrict access.

Entra has helped our IT administrators and HR department save time. As a rough estimate, I would say it has cut our costs down by 20 hours per week.

Microsoft Entra has affected our employee user experience by helping to manage the end-to-end communication between user, device, and services by creating a very similar communication and very similar to the experience, which allows the user to be able to connect seamlessly to services and also to the device itself.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2005275 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Engineering, Integrations at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Register external apps to any app within the Microsoft catalog, a great authentication platform, and a stable solution
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the authentication platform."
  • "I think the solution can improve by making the consumption of that data easier for our customers."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is as an authentication mechanism or platform for the ISV solution that we offer our customers. When they are authenticating to our application, Azure AD is the solution on the backend the customers are actually using.

I'm a software developer so I write a bunch of integrations between applications and one of them is Azure AD. Our organization itself uses Azure AD for our external solution, which we provide as the authentication mechanism.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the authentication platform. Whether that's for users authenticating to applications or for actual applications that we write, authenticating to Microsoft or other applications. We can do app registrations where we're doing client-side or client credential flow authentication from an external app to a hosted Microsoft app or whatever other app within the Microsoft catalog we want to connect to. The focus area has been around being able to integrate and connect to different Microsoft resources using Azure AD to actually provide the authentication piece.

What needs improvement?

There are a lot of areas where the data from a reporting standpoint is extremely granular. It is great that you're able to get to that data at the same time unless you actually are hands-on with the tool, as it can sometimes be overwhelming to actually be able to decipher what that means. So if you're looking at audit reports or another sort of logging, the amount of information is never the problem within Azure AD, it's trying to distill it down to the information that you want. I think the solution can improve by making the consumption of that data easier for the customers.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been working with the solution for five or six years at least. Probably longer. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is very good. I think it's gone down only a couple of times and when it goes down, there are bigger problems than just us. From my perspective, it is fairly stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I think the ease at which you can create new resources and the like from an overarching Azure perspective is phenomenal. I believe Azure AD is scalable. There are some pieces of it that are difficult to use. When assigning layered groups or layered roles to users, trying to figure out the access that a user has can sometimes be a little tricky. But overall I think it follows the Azure model, so it's easy to deploy new pieces as needed.

We have a little over a hundred total users. Azure AD is only accessed by a couple of people within our organization, and they're all based out of our home office in the US. The authentication mechanism is used around the world. We have offices around the US and in Europe that all sign in using Azure AD as the authentication piece. We have 250-ish groups and just over a hundred users.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously we used on-prem ADFS. At our organization, we integrate with a whole host of different identity providers; Ping, Okta, and those types, but we've always used a Microsoft product internally for our user setup and access. We switched to Azure AD because our product is also hosted within Azure. As part of that, we actually also switched to a hybrid cloud where we run both on-prem AD and Azure AD online.

How was the initial setup?

There were a couple of hiccups along the way, but the initial setup was fairly straightforward.

The biggest issue for us was getting the sync working from on-prem to the cloud. That was the hardest part. As far as the deployment itself, we went and created an Azure tenant and then created the Azure AD or a portion of it. After that, setting up the sync was really the biggest part.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was completed in-house, and we integrate it from our product perspective.

What was our ROI?

Azure AD makes our work a lot easier, but I don't have an actual number to show an ROI.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We're a Microsoft shop, so it basically was the only option that we really had if we wanted to use Azure. Our services host Azure so it made sense for us to use Azure AD.

What other advice do I have?

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We actually integrate with Microsoft Entra and are able to add additional functionality to it. Entra does everything down to the entitlement level within applications, whereas our organization would go a little bit further and go to the object level. But from an overall user access perspective within our cloud environment, Microsoft Entra does give us visibility into what that user's assigned, based on their roles and group access.

We don't use Microsoft Entra in the way that most other companies are going to use it. We're looking at it from a strategic perspective for the security reporting application that we provide our customers. When a customer of ours would be using Microsoft Entra and they want to extend it to provide additional reporting or to actually go down and assign functions at the object level within their applications, they would use our organization to do that. I don't technically use Microsoft Entra to actually view what our users are looking at from a user access perspective.

I don't know if we use it internally at our organization, but in the majority of cases, the clients want to be able to have a place where they can do enterprise-wide identity management. And so that's what they are trying to get to with Entra. That's a question that a lot of our customers have across the board. The functionality that Entra provides is the ability to span across different either business applications or other third-party applications. The customer then has to be able to do identity-based access control from a single-pane-of-glass within our Azure AD instance.

I don't do the actual assignment within our organization from an Azure AD perspective. We extend what Microsoft Entra provides, from a feature functionality perspective. We have a separate IT team that would actually do the user creation and access assignment within Azure AD and I don't know if they use Microsoft Entra to manage all identity and access tasks within the organization.

We're a Microsoft ISV and we connect with a number of different ERP, CRM, and HDM-type systems, but we do security on compliance reporting and functionality.

We integrate with the solution. Customers that are using Entra, would or could use our organization when they need that extra level of detail. We use it for development purposes to actually create a working solution. We support that as far as when we do our reporting from our organizational perspective. I don't use Entra internally at our organization, so we integrate with it from a coding perspective. As far as features and functionality go, we integrate with it and we support it. 

We run the solution on-prem and then we sync that to Azure AD in the cloud, but it's on a normal public cloud, overall.

I think Azure AD is a no-brainer if you're a Microsoft shop and if you have other Microsoft products already. It boils down to what sort of office you're looking for. Being a development shop, it absolutely made sense to us to use Azure AD because we were already using Azure, so it could be included with that offering. If you're not a technical shop then I think you should have to look to see if it's something that you are going to manage, and how many other applications you manage within your organization from an access perspective. If you're doing that across 25, 50, or 100 different applications, then Azure AD is a great choice. If you don't really sign into too many things, then there may be more cost-effective ways out there. It depends on what your use case is.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
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Buyer's Guide
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Updated: June 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Microsoft Entra ID Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.