AD and WAAD Integration

There are a variety of ways to integrate an on-premises Active Directory (AD) with Windows Azure Active Directory (WAAD) for Microsoft Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings, such as Office 365. Each column in this chart shows a degree of integration between AD and WAAD, ranging from no integration (“None”) to synchronization of objects and attributes between the two directories to directory synchronization and federation. Higher levels of integration reduce account management effort and simplify sign-in by users but have higher technical requirements to enable the integration.

	None	Objects and Attributes Synchronized	Directories Synchronized and Federated
User identities and passwords and requests to sign-in	Multiple	One if password synchronized, otherwise multiple	One
Provision of directory objects occurs at	Azure or subscription service portal	On-premises AD	On-premises AD
Management of directory objects and their