Azure AD Premium

Like on-premise Active Directory (AD), which helps employees sign into corporate computers and services, Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is Microsoft’s cloud-based identity and access management service which helps users sign in and access resources.

Azure AD is the cornerstone to unlocking other Microsoft cloud services.

Like on-premises Active Directory (AD), which helps employees sign into corporate computers and services, Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is Microsoft’s cloud-based identity and access management service which helps users sign in and access resources. Azure AD is the cornerstone to unlocking other Microsoft cloud services.

With Azure AD users can access cloud-based services such as Office 365, Azure or thousands of SaaS applications. They can also access internal resources, such as apps on your corporate network and intranet, along with any cloud apps developed by your own organisation.

You can even publish on-premises based web applications online securely with Azure AD.

Features

Azure AD is also implementing advanced authentication technologies so that users can use their on-premises credentials to sign in to thousands of SaaS based apps. When layering on advanced features such as conditional access, businesses can now start setting conditions to each app, such as location or device status, and apply advanced security such as two-factor authentication.

If people in your organisation are using a single identity to access on-premise and cloud-based services, Azure AD provides a centralised environment for logging user sign-ins. Premium features within Azure AD can log, alert and even enforce security, based on risk profiles.

All of this is built, managed and maintained by Microsoft directly, with direct access to support staff.

Benefits

Azure AD allows you to create new identities in the cloud, or synchronise existing users, groups and devices to Azure AD for easy integration. Integration is a key component of Azure AD that holds strategic benefits to organisations and IT departments.

Not only is Azure AD able to synchronise with on-premise AD, but it also comes with premium features that would take significant effort and complexity to implement on-premises. Technologies such as multi-factor authentication, self-service password reset, conditional access and privileged identity all become relatively easy to implement within Azure AD.