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Setting up and using Azure Active Directory
Twin Service
Azure Active Directory is Microsoft's centralized identity system for services in the cloud. The directory is certainly no longer intended just for in-house Office 365 systems like Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, or Lync Online; it also aims to facilitate the use of cloud services from other manufacturers. In this article, I will show you how to set up the service and synchronize local user data.
Microsoft officially released Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) for production use in September 2014. Now that the service has been available as a preview for several months, Microsoft is offering a commercial version with support services for the online directory.
In this article, I describe how Azure AD is configured, demonstrate what the directory can do, describe how to integrate it into an existing Active Directory infrastructure, and show how powerful the system is in conjunction with well-known software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings – all of which will provide the overall picture needed to understand Azure AD.
Azure AD should not be seen as a blend of domain controllers (DCs) to be migrated and executed in Azure. Instead, Azure AD provides advanced authentication and connection (federation) services (ADFS) for both the Microsoft online product range and for other manufacturers' online offerings.
Federation is an important buzzword: Azure AD can be used for single sign-on (SSO) solutions with cloud software, if so desired. Other SaaS offerings can be used on the Internet once Azure AD is authenticated for the online directory. The trick behind this is that Microsoft prepared Azure AD and various interfaces in such a way that this SSO feature works with a variety of SaaS offerings.
Currently there are more than 2,500 software offerings, so chances are high that the desired software supports Azure AD. A significant advantage for users within a company is that if someone is sitting at the computer in the office and is connected to
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