Microsoft Entra ID Reviews

We are using Azure Active Directory to secure our identity and applications throughout our corporate. All the authentication is done automatically.

It provides a single pane of glass for managing user access. It streamlines the IT access management process and improves the security of the IT systems. If there are any configuration changes in the software, they are taken care of automatically.

The integration of Azure Active Directory with other Microsoft services is very easy. We can integrate it with Teams, 365, or any other Microsoft solution.

Azure Active Directory provides a seamless and secure way for employees to access work resources that have been assigned to them. They can access the resources from anywhere and work from anywhere.

Azure Active Directory provides a robust set of features. Features such as multifactor authentication and conditional access policies are in-built. These features enhance the security of the IT systems and protect sensitive information from potential threats.

Conditional Access helps to enforce fine-tuned and adaptive access controls. Conditional Access provides more secure authentication for us. We also use multifactor authentication to secure our enterprise from any potential threats.

Permission Management helps to bifurcate the users based on various roles, such as administrator.

Azure Active Directory has saved us time. It has helped to save four hours a day. It has also saved us money. There is about a 10% saving.

Azure Active Directory has affected the employee user experience in our organization. It is seamless. They do not get to feel it is there.

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. Automating IT governance is also easy. These are the advantages that we have.

The role-based access control can be improved. Normally, the role-based access control has different privileges. Each role, such as administrator or user, has different privileges, and the setup rules for them should be defined automatically rather than doing it manually.

I have been using this solution for six years.

It is stable.

It is scalable. We have 1,500 users and two admins, and we plan to continue using Azure Active Directory.

Their technical support is very good. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

We were using Oracle Database. We moved to Azure Active Directory because it is a higher access management solution. It is more secure and helps to manage entities across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Its initial setup is very easy. We had to do policy configuration and user configuration. That was it.

It does not require any maintenance from our end.

We had one person for the initial setup.

It is worth the money.

Overall, I would rate Azure Active Directory a nine out of ten. It is a complete identity access management solution for security and managing all types of multi-cloud environments.

My organization uses Microsoft Entra ID for some people who access Azure, especially for people who need Azure for different things. My organization deals with people transitioning from a standard data center environment into a cloud-based one to meet their needs. My organization has certain conditional access to certain people because we have access to government and cloud services or a commercial environment, along with different versions of each of those across different groups. I would say that most of our organization's work is just giving conditional access to people and occasionally vendors, but nothing too absurd.

I don't want to say that the product hasn't improved anything for my organization. The problem with the solution stems more or less from the fact that technology is moving ahead, and my organization needs to try to keep up with the changes, which makes it a new way of doing things that will be applicable to the future. Maybe if we could transition to certain things faster, I would have seen the product's full benefits. Since the areas of transitions related to the solution are slow, I haven't experienced the full depth of what I can do with the product.

The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to delegate roles to each individual resource, which is great. I think the aforementioned feature is better done in the solution itself than with an actual local AD.

I wish transitioning from Microsoft Active Directory to Microsoft Entra ID was a little easier, and I didn't have to learn so many new concepts. I faced difficulties from Micorosft's end and during the transition from Microsoft Active Directory to Microsoft Entra ID. Sometimes, some of Microsoft's documentation could be a little outdated. The product doesn't meet the organization's niche requirements, especially in our environment. Microsoft Entra ID is not a very standard product.

When I think about the trade-off I have had to go for to get the aforementioned feature, it does annoy me. For me, I can't mirror accounts with the solution. I need to consider that we have so many groups and subscriptions, and I can't just see a blanket of their different individual roles in every single resource if I create an account for someone who takes over a job in the organization. In the solution, some people might have specific roles in one resource, which might be the only thing in there. With Microsoft Entra ID, I can't view every instance, and I have to go one by one subscription all the way down, which is a huge pain when you have 400 to 500 subscriptions. The aforementioned aspects can be considered for the improvement of the solution.

I have been using Microsoft Entra ID for the last five years, but not at its full capacity because, in our organization, we have to ensure that we help with the migration process of different governmental agencies piece by piece since we are a multi-cloud, multi-tenant, multi-forested environment. My organization is a customer of the product.

When it comes to the technical support for the product, I have a representative who works for me, making the support good since I can have him put under fire. I have had some issues with the tool. The IT security audits that come under Microsoft Services Hub are something we needed in Microsoft Gov cloud, and there's only a certain region of Microsoft Gov cloud that supports it, meaning you cannot use Microsoft Services Hub on it, which is all fine as you just have to run it either for by line or you have to run it from within Azure's portal. I had three separate calls with Microsoft's technical support about it, and it was the third tech person who told me after looking at the ticket raised by my organization with the support that the support team had not even finished adding our ticket to their list, which to me was like an organizational issue. Apart from the aforementioned issue I faced with the support team, I feel everything else has been fine. I wouldn't go around saying that Microsoft offers bad technical support.

I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

As the product already existed before I joined my current organization, I was not involved in its deployment phase. I have some past experience with the deployment processes of Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft Active Directory. The deployment process of Microsoft Entra ID was easy, and it is not anything different or terrible.

The time for deployment of the tool depends on the client or the project my organization deals with, and a lot of the clients I have worked for are pretty small teams. I haven't had to do too much in terms of deployment.

My organization hasn't considered switching to a different product, but I know that we have some AWS environments with IAM solutions.

It is easy to use the solution's offering of a single pane of glass for managing user access if you have experience with Azure for a while. During the transitioning period, the depth that revolves around the concepts of blades in Azure can be annoying, especially while attempting to relearn the new places where everything is stored. It feels like Microsoft invented a new language for their new system, but a lot of it is just like an updated version of what it was. I have many people at work who have never heard of Microsoft Entra ID and claim to use Microsoft Active Directory without realizing they are the same. Microsoft Entra ID is just a new version of Microsoft Active Directory.

As a product that offers a single pane of glass, it works great and offers consistency to our organization's security policies if I consider the little or limited Azure we have.

My organization hasn't implemented the tool over 900 other devices yet, so I don't know how it will work after that.

Microsoft Entra Verified ID is good when it comes to privacy and control of identity data. Regarding Microsoft Entra ID, my organization sees a lot of contractors and vendors that come in, which gives us confidence or at least ways to sell it to politicians who have confidence that we can do something.

My organization uses Microsoft Entra Permissions Management, but we are not too in-depth into it. I feel Microsoft Entra Permissions Management is nice. I believe that Microsoft Entra Permissions Management helps reduce risk surface. I don't like one of the top-level tenants in the product. As the product goes down into different resources or subscriptions, I see that agencies own them. Sometimes, I feel my organization's offerings look good, but when I dig into the offerings of other agencies, I realize that we are not good.

The time-saving capabilities of the solution experienced by IT administrators or the HR department in my organization have been more or less the same.

I haven't seen the budget in a way that can help me figure out if using the solution in my organization has helped save money.

I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.

We use Entra for things like, multifactor authentication, user backups, registrations, and other identity management tasks. 

We use Entra ID for 3,000 users, and there are multiple third parties integrated into it. The solution is part of the fabric of our company, so it's essential. 

The solution has saved IT administrators and HR staff time. We build Power BI dashboards on top of it to provide some insights. We're feeding all of the users into that. We've built an aggregator that takes all the sign-in logs and all of that data available in Entra and surfaces it through Power BI, so we can reuse it in different parts of our organization. It makes sense to build the dashboards in Power BI, so that it's centrally available and part of a bigger data set. 

Entra's license management features have saved us money because we can allocate licenses to groups and users. We've built reports on top of that license group user information. We can see how many licenses are being used and whether it's over-provisioned. 

I like Entra's ability to integrate the Active Directory with third-party solutions. It's straightforward. I like the ability to define third-party systems and make the AD the primary identity provider.

Entra offers a single pane of glass that helps us keep our security policies consistent. It helps to drive behavior through security and role-based groups. We use privileged identity management for elevated roles in security groups. 

I started using Entra when it was still called Azure Active Directory. It has been about 10 years. 

No one would say Entra isn't scalable. Some of our deployments were for large UK government projects. One of the largest Azure Active Directory deployments was at NHS which has 2.4 million users. We run and manage the identity part of that service for the NHS and a bunch of other things. 

We're involved with some massive deployments of that critical national infrastructure, including the governance and compliance around it. That's tens of thousands of endpoints. It's the NHS, so that includes people's local doctors, hospitals, and people in the supply chain. 

I rate Microsoft support five out of 10. It's just okay. 

Neutral

Entra isn't too difficult to set up. We follow the Microsoft cloud adoption framework. There's a phase that involves aligning with best practices and making sure it's secured appropriately.

Entra includes things like multifactor authentication, conditional access, etc., so I think it justifies the cost. 

Entra is fairly priced. We get it through an E5 license, so it isn't an issue.  It also costs nothing to our customers. 

I rate Microsoft Entra ID 10 out of 10. I would recommend it if you're using Microsoft or Azure. If not, I would still think about it because creating a tenant is free. There's only a licensing cost once you start putting users on it. 

I use Microsoft Entra ID in my company for provisioning and deprovisioning identities and access.

In the organization where I work, Microsoft Entra ID helps automate the process of creating accounts and purging multiple accounts when they are no longer needed.

The most valuable components of the solution are provisioning and deprovisioning since both features work.

My organization is less familiar with some of the new tools in the market, so I don't know whether I can speak about what needs improvement in Microsoft Entra ID presently.

I have to absorb whatever I have learned about Microsoft Entra ID. I don't know if I can say what additional features need to be introduced in the product, but I can say that the product looks promising based on what I have learned about Microsoft Entra ID.

Attempts to simplify hooks to perform access management are not always easy, but in my organization, we might be able to make some progress in the future.

Microsoft's technical support has shortcomings where improvements are required.

I have been using Microsoft Entra ID since 2005. My organization plans to enter into a partnership with Microsoft, but presently, we are just a customer.

Microsoft Entra Verified ID is a very stable solution.

I have not had any issues with Microsoft Entra Verified ID's scalability feature.

There are 1,50,000 end users of the solution in my organization.

I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

My company has been using Microsoft Entra ID since the release of its earliest version, which was in the mid-2000s.

I was involved in the original deployment or initial setup of Microsoft Entra ID in my organization, and we found it to be a complex process. In the past, my organization was involved in the migration process from a custom Oracle-based solution to Microsoft Entra ID. Microsoft Entra ID was a product that was a new acquisition for Microsoft at the time, in which some custom development work by our company's team was required.

The product is used for our enterprise, an academic medical center with many different hospitals, owing to which the tool is deployed centrally.

The solution is deployed on hybrid cloud services offered by Microsoft Azure Cloud.

The product's deployment phase was carried out with the help of my organization's in-house personnel.

My company has not used many of the new features available with the product's new prices, so I cannot speak if I have seen an ROI from the use of the product in my organization.

I have seen an ROI from the use of the solution if I consider its past usage in our organization since we were able to eliminate work that a lot of people had to do manually, like the creation or deletion of identities.

I work for an academic medical center, where there is a watch kept over every dollar spent. I do have concerns about the micro charges for different levels or features of the product.

My company did consider a product from IBM against Microsoft Entra ID during the evaluation phase. My company chose Microsoft Entra ID since we were involved with Microsoft Active Directory Domain Services. Microsoft Active Directory Domain Services was a nicely tied product with Microsoft Entra ID.

Microsoft Entra ID provides almost a single pane of glass for managing user access, but not in my organization's environment because we have a little bit of custom work to do at our end. It looks like my organization might be able to see how the solution provides a single pane of glass for managing user access in the future.

A single pane of glass affects the consistency of the security policies, as it helps reduce a lot of confusion for the IT professionals who need to work with Microsoft Entra ID. It is very confusing when IT professionals have to bounce to different URLs to find access to tools needed to do their jobs, which was an issue for me, but it looks like there have been some improvements.

I don't use Microsoft Entra Verified ID.

I do use Microsoft Entra Permissions Management, but probably not the way it is designed to be used.

The solution has helped my organization's IT admins and the HR department save a lot of time.

The solution has helped my organization save money, but I cannot quantify it.

I ardently carry out processes where I build out and test a solution and then run a proof of concept before moving to a particular product. I suggest that others who plan to use Microsoft Entra ID consider the aforementioned aspects.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

We're using the solution for our customers. It's for those that may have been on-premises and moved to the cloud when it started to become mainstream. Users wanted to transfer their users and permissions and so on to the cloud and onto Azure.

Azure is the most comfortable cloud to work with. One company we worked with had infrastructure that needed to go to the cloud, and with Microsoft, it's very easy to move. The company is flexible in terms of how you want to handle a migration or configuration. There are a lot of features that help to implement different solutions and that makes it very easy to work with. 

We are using the solution on different projects. Depending on the project, we use different features. It's great for handling user groups and security policies.

We can use it with Office 365 and Exchange. 

It provides a single pane of glass.

It's given us good consistency in terms of the user's sign-on experience.

Microsoft makes a very good product. It makes the policies quite easy and everything is quite understandable. It provides different tools to implement the same scenario.

The admin center for managing all identity and access risks across an organization is very cool. 

Verified ID is very useful for onboarding remote employees. It helps with privacy control of identity data. It makes security very easy. It makes it simple to protect the client. This feature helps IT and other teams protect the business.

We used permission management about a year ago. I had some experience with AWS. I didn't use GCP. Mostly we use Azure. In our case, when we implemented it with the current client, we didn't have any issues with it. It was clear and very simple. It has helped us in a few cases reduce risk when it comes to identity permissions.

Sometimes the client doesn't need the full functionality; they just need a small part of it - and it still works in those cases.

The product has helped us save time in IT and HR. If you create your directory with some logic, it allows you to streamline tasks. It can help more quickly handle requests. The management aspect helps simplify user interactions with various departments.

Azure has very good services that showcase how much money you are spending. It gives you advice on how to protect yourself from spending too much money. It's helpful when we have new clients. You can show them the financials from Microsoft and it will help illustrate how much it costs, and how much it will cost if you scale. It's very transparent on how much money you would spend depending on the setup. 

It's had a positive effect on the employee user experience. 

Sometimes it is difficult to understand the structure of the menu. Sometimes they make some changes in the configuration structure and you might have trouble finding a button or some functionality based on a UI update. That can be annoying. Too many interface changes can make it confusing. 

The documentation could be better. Microsoft documentation is confusing. We do not like working with documents. There is not one big website where you can find whatever you want. Instead, there are thousands of websites that cover certain parts or services. On top of that, they often have old, out-of-date information that hasn't been checked. This is the most difficult part of dealing with Microsoft. 

I've used the solution for almost four and a half years.

The solution hasn't had any downtime. Everything works perfectly.

We've had some issues with performance around scalability. When we tried to deploy in certain areas, we didn't have enough scalability. This was an unusual situation. Typically, scalability is not an issue, however. 

Sometimes we contact technical support, however, not usually during the initial setup. We tend to fix any issues by ourselves. 

Microsoft has different support teams in different countries. Who you speak to depends on what service you are using.

Automatically, your request is sent to a certain team or location. We have had a lot of issues with the Azure DevOps team, which is routed to India and the level of support is much lower. We had to have multiple calls to close a very simple task.

Positive

I have not used any other different solution previously. 

I was involved in the initial deployment. The setups are always complex. 

How long it takes to deploy depends on the client. We've done it in two days or one week. However, the main work is typically done across two days.

We tend to have two to three people involved in the implementation. 

It doesn't require any maintenance on our side. 

Typically, we always do the setup by ourselves. We handle the setups for the clients. We sometimes ask Microsoft for input.

Microsoft has various pricing tiers. 

I've read about Okta, however, I have never used it or evaluated it.

We are a Microsoft gold partner. 

I've used the conditional access feature, however, not very often.

If your company has more than ten users, you need this service. It gives you a lot of features to help manage your organization. A small startup with a handful of employees likely won't need it. However, if you have an organization with a financial department, a developer department, et cetera, it will get complicated handling access and permissions. Without this solution, you can't be sure you'll be safe - especially as you scale up your employees.

We use different models, including on-premises and cloud.

If you are a regular user, you don't need any special knowledge. However, if you are a technician, you can take exams from Microsoft and find materials about the product and really learn about it. That said, anyone can get a sense of the product simply by searching for it on YouTube.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

We use the solution for sign-on authentication to our devices.

During the pandemic, we were able to smoothly shift our employees to work from home. Azure Active Directory played a crucial role in ensuring the security of our systems by verifying the identity of the authorized personnel logging in.

We started using Azure Active Directory because it helped our IT administrators and department save time, which was one of the main reasons.

Azure Active Directory saved our organization money.

Azure Active Directory significantly enhanced the user experience for our employees. We observed a notable increase in employee usage and positive communication regarding their experience, particularly after the pandemic.

The two-step authentication is the most valuable.

I would like to have an additional security option to prevent spam.

The price has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for five years.

The solution is extremely stable.

The solution is highly scalable. We are a school district that is compromised of seven schools. The solution is implemented in multiple locations, and we have over 200 employees and 1,600 students.

The technical support is good. They are always responsive and provide quick resolutions.

Positive

We were using Office 365 but all of the employees started to use their personal emails which affected security so we added Azure AD.

We obtained certification for the deployment of the solution. Microsoft provided a document outlining all the deployment rules and steps, as well as a planning team that provided instructions for all email templates. The deployment required three people.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have seen a return on investment using Azure AD.

We are currently on the education plan, so the price is slightly better than the development plan. However, I believe there is room for even better pricing.

We assessed Google Cloud Identity but ultimately chose Azure AD due to the Microsoft product familiarity among our team. We believed the transition would be smoother, which has been confirmed. Moreover, since not everyone was using Gmail, it would have been challenging for them to learn a new system. However, at that time, everyone in our school was using Microsoft products.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We have a full-time IT staff and part of their role is to maintain the solution.

Azure AD is an excellent and highly stable product. Its user interface is intuitive for those who have prior experience with Microsoft products. With some training, deployment can be carried out successfully. Our deployment experience was hassle-free, but the pre-training we received proved to be very helpful.

The primary use cases for Azure AD include use in projects and deliverables when implementing different solutions like SSPR, multifactor authentication, Conditional Access policies, and fine-graining the controls on end-user machines, devices, and applications. I also use it to sign licenses via different methods, including group-based licensing, direct licensing to individual users, registering applications, and providing CPUs and credentials. Lastly, I use Azure AD for whitelisting external identities and domains for communication between internal and external domains.

Our organization is global, with over nine locations across the world. We have a hybrid environment, which is very complex due to the size of the organization, and we have a varied client base. From a security standpoint, we have a variety of security services and products. 

Azure AD is a one-stop solution where we can manage every aspect of identities, access, and applications via policies across all domains of our organization.

We use the Conditional Access feature to enforce fine-tuned and adaptive access controls. This makes our Zero Trust strategy to verify users more robust, as standard users have limited access, on limited devices, with limited permissions. They can only access the domain on specific machines and must be on the corporate or office network. Access from outside the network isn't possible unless it's from a whitelisted location, and along with MFA, we have a powerful Zero Trust model in place.

Azure AD saves us a lot of time, as we previously used an on-prem legacy solution with poor integrations, which slowed onboarding and other processes. Thanks to the product, we spend approximately 70% less time daily and about 80% less time weekly. That's a big plus. 

The solution helps our organization save money from a cost perspective, and there are several other vital angles to consider. Azure AD is an out-of-the-box product in terms of features and security, which is a reduced cost. Whether an organization requires P1 or P2 licensing is another consideration. Finally, if a company is replacing legacy systems, that's money saved for licensing and maintaining those systems. Some of our clients have seen 30-40% savings, especially those using complete legacy systems and then switching to a cloud environment.   

Azure AD greatly helps user experience, as we can integrate the solution with many services. End-user experience improved, whether staff members try to access resources from mobile or even personal devices. We can fine-tune access control across the enterprise, and that helps us provide a good end-user experience.  

The most valuable features are the Conditional Access policies, SSPR, and MFA. Another good functionality is registering enterprise applications to provide access to external parties. These four features are precious and are the most used across different use cases for various clients and projects.

Azure AD provides a single pane of glass for managing user access; we can assign access permissions to different user accounts based on situational requirements, and helpful security features are available. The solution provides sign-on consistency, and we can configure permissions to enable single sign-on for a particular application or domain. This gives us the flexibility to offer a great user experience.    

The solution gives us a lot of flexibility when it comes to managing all identity and access tasks in our organization. We can manage freshly provisioned identities from scratch, as well as existing identities and apps through the Azure admin center.   

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.

I've been using the solution for over three years. 

The solution is stable, though there can be issues around synchronization within a vast organization. Performance-wise, Azure AD is a good product.

The scalability is good. 

Microsoft technical support can take a while to resolve. I can get a response in 30 minutes, but the time to resolve is usually more than four hours or over a day. I wonder if the support staff has adequate training and expertise to provide a better service.

Neutral

We previously used on-premises AD and switched to Azure AD because we wanted the benefits associated with cloud-based solutions.

The complexity of the initial setup depends on the deployment; cloud deployments are very straightforward, on-prem implementations are more complex due to the infrastructure, and hybrid deployments are always complex as there are many considerations and assessments to be made.

It is hard to measure ROI with security solutions, but identity is the first point of vulnerability for cyber attacks, so identities must be secure and well-managed. The solution provides this, and that is a worthwhile investment.

Azure AD has four licensing options- free, Office 365 apps, Premium P1, and Premium P2. The free option has a limited number of identities and features, and the Office 365 version comes included in several Office 365 subscriptions. With the P1 and P2 licenses, we get all the freeware features plus additional security features, but these come at a higher price. The base price for P1 and P2 is $6 and $9 per user per month, respectively.

I rate the solution nine out of ten. 

From a security standpoint, we don't have major controls from Azure AD, but we can implement features such as MFA and Conditional Access policies to fine-grain the rules on apps and devices. We can also enforce policies where users have different sign-on requirements for the same account, depending on where they sign in from.  

We used the solution's Conditional Access feature in conjunction with Microsoft Endpoint Manager as it was a requirement for a client-side project. There were some conflicts between the two tools regarding device management, so we had to select a different approach. Conditional Access reduces the risk of unpatched devices connecting to our corporate network because it triggers the policy stating only compliant devices can log in and access resources.

Clients use different deployment methods for Azure AD, but most implement them within a hybrid environment. A few organizations are entirely cloud and SaaS-based, as they don't want the maintenance and management associated with on-prem infrastructure and prefer the security offered by the cloud.

My advice to those looking to implement the solution is to consider their primary goal and use case for the product and how they want to implement it. If you have a hybrid environment, many details about how Azure AD can fit into the environment must be figured out beforehand. Consider the costs and how the solution will help from a security standpoint over the next five to ten years, from all perspectives, including networking, security, systems management, and maintenance.

There are many use cases. The main use case is identity synchronization to on-prem with AD Connect. Another main use case is related to conditional access. Automated licensing is also one of the use cases. 

It is also used for identity access management with specific workflows, rules, etc. Permission or role management for applications is another use case, but I have never used that in production. I have demonstrated it to multiple customers, but they were not there yet.

The main benefit is that you have one repository for identities. That is very important for main companies. If you have worked with or are familiar with the concepts of on-prem Active Directory, you can easily start with Microsoft Entra ID. You have everything in one area. You have application identities, workload identities, and other identities in one area. It is very convenient and powerful. It helps with centralized identity management. You can also connect with your partner organizations. It is quite powerful for collaboration with your partners, customers, etc.

Microsoft Entra ID provides a single pane of glass for managing user access. It is pretty good in terms of the sign-on experience of users. It is easy to understand for even non-technical people.

With this single pane of glass, we also have a good view of the security part or security policies. From an admin's perspective, we have complete logs of everything that is happening in almost real time. We have pretty much everything we need. In recent times, I have not come across many use cases that could not be covered.

With conditional access, you can make sure that you have control at any time. It is a part of the zero-trust strategy. Any access is verified. You have a very good grasp on identity and devices for compliance. You can manage any issues through Microsoft Entra ID. Most companies I have worked with let you bring your own device, and device management is very important for them. They have a tight grasp on who can connect and which devices can connect to their network or cloud resources.

There have been improvements in the onboarding and the leaving process. It has always been a challenge to make sure that people are given the right access right at the beginning and that their access is disabled at the right moment. Historically, while auditing clients, I could see people who left the company five years ago, but their access was still active. Permission management has been helpful there. It is a nice thing to implement.

In terms of user experience, we have not received any feedback from the users about Microsoft Entra ID, which is good because it means it is transparent to them. It works as expected.

My two preferred features are conditional access and privileged identity management. They are very powerful. I like conditional access a lot. It is an easy way to secure identities.

Privileged identity management helps to control who is requesting access, when, and what for. It gives you a nice overview of what is happening in your tenant and why people are doing certain things. You can easily detect outliers or if something is wrong. 

They can combine conditional access for user actions and application filtering. Currently, they are separated, and we cannot mix the two. I do not know how it would be possible, but it would be interesting.

For permission access, there can be a bit more granular distinction between Microsoft applications. Currently, you have a pack of things, but sometimes, you only want to allow one of the things and not the whole pack. For example, you just want to allow the Azure portal, not the whole experience. However, such scenarios are rare. Overall, I am pretty happy with where we are today. It is always exciting to do new things, but for the customers I have worked with, it covered 99% of the scenarios.

I have been using it since I started using Azure and M365. It has been almost six years.

It is very stable.

It is very scalable. I have not met any limitations, but I do not have clients with more than 2,000 users. 

I have used their tech support one or two times. It is pretty good. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have worked a bit with Okta and AWS IAM, but they are more expensive than Microsoft Entra ID. I last worked with Okta about two years ago. At that time, Okta was more advanced and intuitive in certain aspects.

Microsoft Entra ID is a no-brainer if you already do not have a solution and if you have on-prem Active Directory. If you already have something, then the choice can be different. Microsoft Entra ID works for various use cases because you have connectors with pretty much every application on the planet. You have a lot of possibilities to integrate. You can also integrate with on-prem. In terms of security, there are a lot of features to protect your identity. It is quite helpful and appealing, so if you do not have anything and you are going to use Microsoft technologies, it is a no-brainer. Similarly, if you are a cloud company just starting, and if you choose Azure, Microsoft Entra ID is a no-brainer. If you choose another cloud, you can go for another solution.

I have been working with cloud and hybrid deployments. There are a few cloud deployments, but I work a lot with hybrid deployments.

Its setup is straightforward. I am very used to it now, and for me, it is pretty straightforward. The deployment duration depends on the features that you want to enable. Features such as conditional access require discussions with the customers. Generally, two weeks are enough. You might also have to train the internal team on it, which could take a bit more time.

You do not require too many people for deployment. One or two people are normally enough.

In terms of maintenance, it is very easy to maintain. You might have to add another business case for your customers or simplify something you put in place. You have to be aware of the new features, etc.

Microsoft Entra ID must have saved organizations money, but I do not have the data.

Its price is okay. It is easy to go from a P1 to P2 license. It is not exactly a bargain, but I would recommend the P2 license.

Make sure to use MFA and conditional access wherever possible.

Overall, I would rate Microsoft Entra ID a nine out of ten.