What Azure AD is not (what is Azure AD?)
From my experience, knowing what Azure AD is not is as important as knowing what Azure AD is. Understanding what Azure AD is not will help you avoid some of the common confusion out there about this service, so let's start out with this statement: Azure AD is NOT on-premises Active Directory in Azure! As a matter of fact, it has a different use case and structure from on-premises Active Directory (AD). I personally would have called it Azure Identity Service or some other name to avoid confusion with on-premises Active Directory, but it seems that Microsoft wanted to keep the Active Directory brand name going.
So, if Azure AD is not on-premises AD in Azure, what is it then? I will give you two descriptions to help you understand what it is. Here is the first one: Azure AD is the identity provider for Microsoft cloud services. You may be thinking to yourself, what does that even mean? Let's check it out.
