Azure AD is Becoming Microsoft Entra ID

Not a fan.  This change is both unnecessary and wasteful of customer time.  

MS should spend more time improving products and less time renaming them.  How much will this rebranding cost MS, and who pays for that? 

MS, please be more thoughtful about naming on product release so that products need not be renamed later.  Also consider the impact of these pointless changes before making them.  Marketing-driven changes only create confusion and busywork within customer environments, making MS products less appealing to those who support them.

I agree with the other sentiments. Maybe it will grow on me as time goes by, but I don't see how this is a logical rename.

Was Azure AD a perfect branding? No, not even close. I could have done better. But how long has AAD been around for now? 10 years? I think at this point people who are in-the-know understand what it means.

But the problem your marketing team(s) has/have created is similar to how you've branded the "new LAPS" as "Windows LAPS" adjacent to "legacy" LAPS - it's a problem of search-ability and documentation. If I search for "LAPS" I could get information pertaining to either system due to how vague it is. That's a problem because the systems are mutually exclusive - documentation for one doesn't directly translate to the other.

Compare this with AAD > Entra ID. You've now created *two different* names that refer to the *same* service. So now when you do a search for "Entra" for the rest of 2023, you may not find what you're looking for outside of MS official documentation, which is incomplete compared to the wealth of documentation that industry has created for AAD. And now old documentation (assuming it's still relevant) is going to either need to be updated to reflect the rebrand or else new learners/beginners/industry entrants are going to have a rough time troubleshooting Entra if they don't know to look for AAD.

Another problem you've created is similar to your terrible branding of Microsoft Defender. When you say "defender" now we're referring to a "family" of products. Do you mean Defender ATP? Defender for Endpoint? Defender for Identity? Defender for Cloud Apps? Something else? The same problem is going to afflict Entra because it's a family. But clearly the most popular member of that family is going to be ID.

As a final note - I must say it's quite ironic if I jump back to the LAPS/Entra comparison.

• The brand of "LAPS" refers to TWO things which are mutually exclusive. The opposite should have been done by marketing - come up with a new name.
• The brands of "Entra ID" and "Azure AD" refer to the SAME thing which are mutually inclusive. The names should have been kept close together at the very least, not completely changed.

I accept payment via wire for my consulting.

From an infrastructure standpoint this is really stupid.  Microsoft warns about renaming an Active Directory Domain.  Does the Azure Active Directory become the Entra Active Directory?  When you join a Windows 10/11 computer to the Microsoft 365 tenant A/D (AzureAD) will it now be called EntraAD?  How does this provide a value to our customers?  

This is clearly another bonehead move by Microsoft for marketing purposes.  There's no technical reason to make this change.  

Did Microsoft listen to any of its partners or customers or just make this change without consulting anyone?  STUPID MOVE MICROSOFT.

Wow, this is so stupid renaming.

This is idiotic to the core I see no merit in this instead you've wasted everyone's time, energy and money.

Technical teams around the world will be split as they will continue to call a spade a spade making communication with teams that use a newer word to describe that same spade twice as hard.

Vendors will scramble to update documentation and images in their materials to get in front of customers only for their customers to turn around and ask "But do you support Azure?"

It's a little late for an April fools joke.

Oh no, please, not another renaming! We do have more important things to do!

Think of all the documentations, the service user names that include AAD, and so on!

What a waste of time 😞

Please stop... Just stop with this nonsense. Nobody is asking for this. You are not introducing anything of value. You are just adding another layer on top of the same product and calling it something new. You are confusing your existing customers in the hopes of gaining new ones.

This is a terrible news and a terrible change.

I’m convinced the marketing department believes it is a good thing when Partners and admins are angry about rebranding that leads to zero improvements of the core product. It gets people talking about the rebrand, generates news stories and blogs. 

Of all the things that clearly need to be fixed inside of Microsoft right now, renaming Azure AD wasn’t on the radar of things I believed would help us sell more or grow a stronger Partnership.

Irina_NechaevaI can only speak for myself, but I think you need to take a step back here and look at the underlying common theme of the complaints.  Going through internal and customer documentation and updating text, screenshots, powerpoints, etc., is a pain and I'm glad you want to "listen" and "assist" in this effort.  But the problem is we shouldn't have to do this at all.  I have met exactly zero people in all my technical pre-sales calls and project scoping who were confused by "Azure AD."  I have met zero people who thought or cared that it shared a name with the server Active Directory.  It's just completely unnecessary.  Even the five minutes I'm spending typing this reply is five minutes I should not have to spend in my busy day at all.  This whole thing is just entirely made up by marketing for no apparent reason whatsoever.  I am going to guess that after all is said and done, this isn't going to increase adoption of Microsoft identity products.  In fact, it may decrease it because "Azure AD" is already well-known.  You see it everywhere as an integration option into cloud products.  People who don't follow tech news will just think "Entra" is a new product and will wonder if they have to pay more or be worried "Azure AD" doesn't exist.  There is just no logical reason at all for this.

You could have saved a lot of trouble by just announcing "Azure AD is now a part of the Microsoft Entra family of products" and then left it at that.  Everything else is completely unnecessary and only going to create extra unnecessary work for your partners for absolutely no benefit for either Microsoft or those partners.

Please please don't do this. All that documentation that will be wrong, all those audit and compliance documents, all those PowerPoints. All those license inventories to be updates. MADNESS.

Even your own documentation is not up to date

What is Azure Active Directory? - Microsoft Entra | Microsoft Learn