Microsoft is renaming Azure Active Directory to "Entra" much to the annoyance of IT Professionals

[AlTech]

Summary

Microsoft has announced they'll be renaming Azure Active Directory to "Entra" and IT Professionals are not happy to say the least.

 

The Register reports that Microsoft plans this change to occur in August though there has been negative feedback to the name change announcement mainly due to concerns that up to a decade worth of  documentation will need updating and users will need to relearn the name of the system.

 

The underlying tech of Azure AD is staying the same under the new name but it is being renamed to fit within the portfolio of products previously renamed to "Entra". Azure AD has been around for a decade and has amassed quite a customer base in that time. This change will affect a lot of businesses and people.

 

Quotes

Quote

 In a blog post, Irina Nechaeva, Microsoft general manager of product marketing for Identity & Access, said the change is supposed to "make it easier for you to use and navigate the unified and expanded Microsoft Entra portfolio."

 

My thoughts

 I'm kinda suprised and honestly it is slightly annoying as someone who is considering purchasing Azure AD services and has purchased other Azure services in the past. This feels like a Product Manager in Microsoft was bored or wanted to claim the Entra rebranding as theirs. If I was Microsoft I would keep the name since it has such strong brand recognition and such s customer base. If Microsoft wanted to increase the customer base I'd suggest better marketing their Azure AD service for managing external logins instead and rebranding that to something like Azure Authentication or Azure Auth. I kinda hope Microsoft backtracks on the namechange but something tells me they won't.

 

Sources

 https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/12/azure_ad_name_change/

[Forbidden Wafer]

4 minutes ago, AlTech said:

If Microsoft wanted to increase the customer base I'd suggest better marketing their Azure AD service for managing external logins instead and rebranding that to something like Azure Authentication or Azure Auth.

I'd suggest them to fixing their existing products instead of releasing new bugged features.

[Mayday793]

ive barely use Azure products (sometimes will use a cloud machine just out of interest or something) and this is so annoying. The Azure name is great and theres already great brand reputation (as you said) , i really dont understand why they'd change it.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

I would understand if they want to further make the distinction between on-premise Active Directive and Azure Active Directory since it is not as simple as one is cloud and the other isn't. But at the same time, it's a bit too late now. Now we're going to have a ton of documentation and reporting systems to update...

[emosun]

48 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

I'd suggest them to fixing their existing products

Microsoft? Seriously?

why do that when they can just start over from scratch and make it terrible? cough* windows 11

[LeapFrogMasterRace]

LOL. It took me so long to finally try to understand the difference between things like MECM (SCCM) and the Endpoint and the entire Azure stack now they are renaming it making even more confusion?! AWS is better not because of their actual feature but you actually know what the heck the product is for. 

[StDragon]

That's the culture at Microsoft, to compete against each other internally and cannibalize their own branding so as to create an opening for a successor marketing launch. THEY ALWAYS DO THIS SHIT!!

[LAwLz]

Just to be clear, they aren't going to rename Azure. What they are renaming is a specific feature in Azure that is called "Azure Active Directory" (AAD). I just want to clarify that because it sounds like some people believe they are renaming the entire Azure brand, which they aren't. 

 

 

I actually think this change will be for the better. It will become more organized within the Azure portfolio, and as AAD evolved the name is quite confusing as it is. The only drawback is the whole relearning and updating documentation aspect, but I kind of doubt that will become a major issue. It will probably take some time to fix, but realistically it will be a search and replace in a few documents. 

[AlTech]

11 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

I would understand if they want to further make the distinction between on-premise Active Directive and Azure Active Directory since it is not as simple as one is cloud and the other isn't. But at the same time, it's a bit too late now. Now we're going to have a ton of documentation and reporting systems to update...

Not to mention also Azure AD for External Authentication in the Cloud which is a whole seperate thing; and which is what my interest in Azure AD is .

[AlTech]

11 hours ago, Mayday793 said:

ive barely use Azure products (sometimes will use a cloud machine just out of interest or something) and this is so annoying. The Azure name is great and theres already great brand reputation (as you said) , i really dont understand why they'd change it.

 

10 hours ago, LeapFrogMasterRace said:

LOL. It took me so long to finally try to understand the difference between things like MECM (SCCM) and the Endpoint and the entire Azure stack now they are renaming it making even more confusion?! AWS is better not because of their actual feature but you actually know what the heck the product is for.

Azure as a brand isn't going away. It's just Active Directory is being renamed to "Entra". Everything else in Azure will still keep the same name and same branding.

 

Fwiw, AWS is more popular than Azure mainly due to mindshare and notable companies using it. Azure is generally cheaper and more comprehensive as an ecosystem than AWS is. Though arguments could be made that AWS is simpler in naming of some services.

[HenrySalayne]

13 hours ago, AlTech said:

that up to a decade worth of  documentation will need updating and users will need to relearn the name of the system.

Ctrl + H

 

You're welcome!

[williamcll]

Why not call of Microsoft Office Address?

[NobleGamer]

22 hours ago, AlTech said:

This change will affect a lot of businesses and people.

You mean only people at businesses that implement Active Directory in Azure?

 

Because as an SSO end user that logs into sites that leverage Azure AD, I don't recall ever seeing the words "Azure AD", so it's not going to affect me.

[Tribalinius]

I'm sure it will go as smoothly as usual haha.

Tech 1: "Did you do the modification in Entra?"
Tech 2: "Azure AD?"
Tech 1: "Yeah."
Tech 2: "Yeah."

 

I get they want to put AAD under an IAM umbrella with all the other identiy products and consolidate some endpoints together, but I doubt Microsoft ID will resonate a lot with the pro community. Azure Active Directory is going to stick in workplace discussions, I'd wager 2$ on this. It's just going to create confusion in our teams, at least in the short term. I wonder how long they will keep it until they are fed up with admins telling them it's a dumb name for such a core product and re-establish the "AAD" name haha.

 

While it's not actually exactly the same thing, they did something similar with Intune. Even when they pushed it as "Endpoint Manager", people were still referring it to Intune and basically tracked back and changed the branding of Microsoft Endpoint Manager to Microsoft Intune. I can see a similar scenario playing out where Entra becomes Azure Active Directory and the directory part being called Microsoft ID.