Advisory Note: Extending your Active Directory to the Cloud - 71108

Most organizations have Microsoft Active Directory in place. The Active Directory (AD) builds the foundation of their on-premises infrastructure for managing users, performing their primary network authentication and authentication to AD-integrated applications such as Microsoft Exchange Server, and some network infrastructure services including client configuration management based on Group Policies.

AD is a directory service that is optimized for supporting these requirements. This works well for the employees and the on-premise IT infrastructure. However when it comes to external users things become more challenging. While most organizations manage the “long term” externals – the ones who spend a lot of time on-premises, need access to internal IT systems and frequently even have a company eMail address – in Active Directory, organizations struggle with managing all the other externals such as employees of business partners or customers with occasional access only to a selected application...