About Office 365 and Azure Active Directory

 

Applies to: Office 365

Summary: Describes the role of Azure Active Directory in cloud services like Office 365, how it integrates with your on-premises directory service, and links for more information.

We're listening to your feedback and consolidating all our Office 365 deployment content. On July 1st, 2015, all information in this guide will be moved to https://support.office.com/, and these pages will be removed from TechNet. As you review the content still on TechNet, you'll notice many have links pointing to the new content already on https://support.office.com/.

To explore content available on https://support.office.com/, start with the Office 365 for business - Admin Help page.

Azure Active Directory provides identity management and access control capabilities for cloud services such as Office 365. Azure AD capabilities include a cloud-based store for directory data and a core set of identity services, including user logon processes, authentication services, and Federation Services. The identity services that are included with Azure AD easily integrate with your on-premises Active Directory deployments and fully support third-party identity providers.

It’s important to clearly distinguish Azure AD as an identity platform for Office 365 from Active Directory deployments on Azure Virtual Machines. Both are discussed in this article. For details, see Azure Active Directory Identity.

If you’re an IT professional, a system architect, or a developer who wants a deeper understanding of managing online and federated identities, see Active Directory from on-premises to the cloud.