Typical Microsoft. A name starts gaining traction and they rename it. Azure AD is simple and effective. What the heck is an Entra and why do I want it to manage my ids?
The most mystifying re-branding of my MSFT-adjacent career had been Lync to “Skype for Business,” which I had trouble even researching at work because back when they pulled that clever move, most corporate firewalls were still blocking Skype.com, where they were cleverly hosting technical documentation about the switch.
But this might actually beat that, though the direction I see Power BI going into even less-searchable Fabric may provide some stiff competition…
Microsoft is going to rebrand itself out of people's consciousness one day... I find all these rebranding moves make it extremely confusing to follow what's what.
>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.
So we will still be calling it Azure AD in most situations where someone interacts with it
Maybe they could fix the naming scheme of Azure AD B2B and Azure AD B2C and make the new brands easier to distinguish than a single letter flip? That would be a really nice use of a new brand name.
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Oof, looking it up the answer for myself is: yes and no. Two of the new products mentioned are Entra External ID and Entra External Verified ID which are apparently the replacements of B2C (definitely) and B2B (sort of), respectively. Neither existing B2C nor B2B are going anywhere, may live beside their "Entra counterparts" for some time to come (including that Entra External ID is still only in Preview), adding even more confusion plus future migration headaches. Wow.
Probably a smart decision on Microsoft’s part.
The current identity solution has progressed far away from what Active Directory was decades ago and it makes sense to remove that, usually negative, branding.
I work in large Microsoft Shop that works with a lot of large enterprise customers. I doubt very much that anyone will start to say "Entra ID" instead of Azure AD. I firmly believe that for always we will continue to call it for Azure AD. Why? Because everyone knows what Azure AD is. The name itself is very descriptive in regards what Azure AD is (or the role it performs). "Entra" has no relation to anything and it sounds stupid also. This renaming is utter less pointless
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 35.9 ms ] threadBut this might actually beat that, though the direction I see Power BI going into even less-searchable Fabric may provide some stiff competition…
So we will still be calling it Azure AD in most situations where someone interacts with it
…
Oof, looking it up the answer for myself is: yes and no. Two of the new products mentioned are Entra External ID and Entra External Verified ID which are apparently the replacements of B2C (definitely) and B2B (sort of), respectively. Neither existing B2C nor B2B are going anywhere, may live beside their "Entra counterparts" for some time to come (including that Entra External ID is still only in Preview), adding even more confusion plus future migration headaches. Wow.