Today we announced significant milestones for identity and network access, including the news that Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is becoming Microsoft Entra ID.
As part of our ongoing commitment to simplify secure access experiences for everyone, the rebranding of Azure AD to Microsoft Entra ID is designed to make it easier for you to use and navigate the unified and expanded Microsoft Entra portfolio.
I want to assure you that your work protecting your organization, customers, partners, and the investments you’ve made in deploying Azure AD will continue uninterrupted. All configurations and integrations will continue to work as they do today, without any action needed from you. You’ll see the new name start appearing in Microsoft product experiences In August 2023.
No action is needed from you
You can continue to rely on familiar Azure AD capabilities accessed through the Azure portal, Microsoft 365 admin center, and the Microsoft Entra admin center.
Only the name is changing
To make the transition seamless for you and your organization, there are no changes to any Azure AD capabilities, APIs, login URLs, PowerShell cmdlets, Microsoft authentication library (MSAL), developer experiences, or tooling.
All licensing plans and pricing for Azure AD and Microsoft 365 plans that include Azure AD remain the same, with only the display names for the licensing plans changing. The summary below provides easy mapping from our current Azure AD SKU names to the new SKU names under Microsoft Entra ID. Service plan display names will change on October 1, 2023.
Once the new name rolls out, all Azure AD features will also move under the new name. For example, Azure AD Conditional Access will become Microsoft Entra Conditional Access, Azure AD MFA will become Microsoft Entra MFA, Azure AD single sign-on will become Microsoft Entra single sign-on, and so on. If you are a content creator, developer, or partner who needs detailed renaming guidance, please read the Microsoft Learn article “New name for Azure Active Directory.”
Timeline for the Azure AD name change
Today’s announcement kicks off a month of informing all Azure AD customers about the upcoming change. You’ll see the news on Tech Community, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Learn, and other communication channels.
In August 2023, the Microsoft Entra ID name will start replacing the Azure AD name across Microsoft product experiences including the newly upgraded Microsoft Entra admin center, Azure portal, Microsoft 365 admin center, and other Microsoft commercial products, documentation, learning content, and websites.
We expect the name change from Azure AD to Microsoft Entra ID to be complete across most product experiences by the end of 2023.
Why we’re changing Azure AD to Microsoft Entra ID
It’s been a year since we introduced Microsoft Entra as a new product family for all our identity and access products, bringing to life our expanded vision for secure access. At the time, the Microsoft Entra product family included Azure AD plus two new products—Microsoft Entra Permissions Management, a cloud infrastructure entitlement management product, and Microsoft Entra Verified ID, a decentralized identity solution.
Since then, we’ve added several new products into the Microsoft Entra family—Microsoft Entra ID Governance, Microsoft Entra Workload ID, and the new products we introduced today, Microsoft Entra Internet Access and Microsoft Entra Private Access. All to advance our promise to deliver a complete repertoire of solutions that provide secure access for any identity to any resource.
Customers have embraced new Microsoft Entra products while continuing to rely on our hero cloud identity product, Azure AD, that currently protects over 720,000 organizations worldwide. We see that most customers, just like Avanade and Condatis, successfully deploy our new products alongside Azure AD, bringing to life our vision for unified secure access with Microsoft Entra.
Unifying all identity and access capabilities under the Microsoft Entra name will make it easier to navigate and use all products and capabilities in our expanded portfolio, ensuring that you have the strongest protections for any access point. We’re also standardizing the use of the term “ID” for all our identity products: Microsoft Entra ID, ID Protection, ID Governance, External ID, Workload ID and Verified ID. The visual below represents the future state of Microsoft Entra portfolio once we finalize the new name roll-out.
You’re an important part of this journey
Many of you have been with us on this journey since the earliest days of identity and access management, starting with Windows Active Directory, then embracing digital transformation and adopting our cloud identity—Azure AD.
Your feedback and insights guided the evolution of identity security beyond directory-based identity management to a connected global fabric of people, devices, apps, and digital workloads—all needing secure access to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
We’d like your help spreading the word about the name change and implementing it in your own experiences. If you’re a content creator, author of internal documentation for IT or identity security admins, developer of Azure AD–enabled apps, independent software vendor, or Microsoft partner, we hope you’ll use the naming guidance in Microsoft Learn to make the change to Microsoft Entra ID by the end of 2023.
We are grateful for your continued partnership in building a safer world for all.
Resources:
- Join the Ask Me Anything (AMA) June 27, 2023 about the Azure AD renaming.
- Prep for updating the Azure AD name in your own content or apps with the documentation in Microsoft Learn.
- Hear all of today’s announcements by watching Reimagine secure access with Microsoft Entra.
Learn more about Microsoft Entra:
- Read related articles:
- See recent Microsoft Entra blogs
- Dive into Microsoft Entra technical documentation
- Join the conversation on the Microsoft Entra discussion space and Twitter
- Learn more about Microsoft Security