Item: Microsoft Entra ID
Rating: 8
Author: John Robinson

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Probably the best known tool for Active Directory management. Integrates with just about any other online software that needs an ID provider (as it's so well known). Not always the easiest to set up or use at times, but the support documentation is good and online community is very large. Useful for managing security, and identity of staff and guest users to our systems.

Pros and Cons

User management
Role Management
Multi factor authentication

They could stop changing things so often, hard to find things if you don't use them frequently.
Occasional outages are annoying, and the alerts not terribly helpful sometimes. they tell you when something is down, but don't always notify when its back up.
Things are deprecated fairly often, so don't get too invested in one way of doing things, you may have to change how things work in the future.

Return on Investment

Streamlined ID management for my organization
made my life as an IT admin easier in a few ways, by allowing simpler management of users

Deployment

Only in the cloud, we ran hybrid for a year or so, then went all cloud about two years ago. Everything is in Azure, SharePoint or Entra.

Multi-App Security

Yes. Using SAML for SSO, we've tried to bring as many apps as we can onto the platform for IDP. Leaves me as admin with fewer places I have to go to add or remove users as they come and go. Most places have been fairly easy to set up and connect, documentation is mostly good, and product support people are most familiar with connecting Entra.

DocuSign, SurveyMonkey, Zoom, Planful.

No on premise apps.

End User Experience

Easier to change user passwords, was a hassle when we had only physical servers and they could only change a password if connected to the VPN. Multifactor authentication is native and doesn't require any 3rd party apps to run. Can centrally deploy and manage software on user devices, making patching easier for all involved.

Key Insights

Do you think Microsoft Entra ID delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Microsoft Entra ID's feature set?

Yes

Did Microsoft Entra ID live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Microsoft Entra ID go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Microsoft Entra ID again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

Good if you're all in on the Microsoft online environment, MS365 or using Azure services. Integrates very well with those.
Not so much if you're just using it as an IDP for other services. It does try to take over somethings (like MX and DNS records) that you may want to keep having managed/hosted at 3rd parties.

Entra ID a simple overview

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Entra ID