Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) becomes Microsoft Entra ID
Microsoft announced the next milestone in their expanded vision for unified, secure access. Part of this includes renaming Azure Active Directory to Microsoft Entra ID to unify naming with the Microsoft Entra product family.
What is Microsoft Entra?
Microsoft Entra is the identity and access product family Microsoft introduced in May 2022 to support our expanded vision for secure access. The Microsoft Entra product family has grown from three at launch (Azure AD, Permissions Management, and Verified ID) to now eight, including ID Governance, Workload ID, and External ID.
Microsoft Entra protects any identity and secures access to any resource—on-premises, across clouds, and anywhere in between—with a product family that unifies multicloud identity and network access solutions.
Renaming Azure AD to Microsoft Entra ID
With the expansion of Microsoft Entra into the Security Service Edge (SSE) category and the launch of two new products—Microsoft Entra Internet Access and Microsoft Entra Private Access—Microsoft is unifying their identity and network access portfolio under the Microsoft Entra brand. This change will simplify secure access experiences for Microsoft customers.
No action is needed from customers
This rename won’t change Azure AD capabilities, APIs, PowerShell cmdlets, sign-in URLs, service level agreement, Microsoft authentication libraries, developer experiences, or tooling. Deployments, configurations, and integrations will continue to work without interruption.
No change to pricing and licensing
All existing pricing and licensing plans remain the same and can be easily mapped between Azure AD and Microsoft Entra ID plans. Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 plans will continue to include Microsoft Entra ID (currently Azure AD). The new display names for licensing plans (SKUs)—Microsoft Entra ID Free, Microsoft Entra ID P1, and Microsoft Entra ID P2—will be rolled out on October 1, 2023.
Change management
Over the coming weeks, you will see notifications in the Microsoft Entra, Azure, and Microsoft 365 admin portals, in documentation, and in other places where you interact with Azure AD. Microsoft will complete the name change across all interfaces by the end of 2023.
Figure 1. With the name change to Microsoft Entra ID, the standalone license names are changing. Azure AD Free becomes Microsoft Entra ID Free. Azure AD Premium P1 becomes Microsoft Entra ID P1. Azure AD Premium P2 becomes Microsoft Entra ID P2. And our product for customer identities, Azure AD External Identities, becomes Microsoft Entra External ID. SKU and service plan name changes take effect on October 1, 2023.
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