Upgrade from Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS)

Simplify infrastructure and improve costs, security, and scalability with cloud-based identity and access management by migrating to Azure Active Directory (Azure AD).

Learn how to migrate

Safeguard your organization with Azure AD

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Why upgrade from AD FS to Azure AD

Stay secure

Protect your environment with intelligent security. Use strong authentication and real-time, risk-based adaptive access policies to grant access to resources.

Improve productivity

Enhance workforce productivity with seamless access and a simple sign-in experience to all your resources, from cloud apps to on-premises apps.

Lower IT cost

Reduce operational costs of managing and maintaining an AD FS environment. Increase IT efficiency and stay resilient by unifying identity management in the cloud.

What is Azure AD?

Azure AD is a complete identity and access management solution with integrated security. Give your workforce a single identity to access all apps and collaborate from anywhere.

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Comparing AD FS and Azure AD

Product feature
Not applicable

AD FS capability

Azure AD capability
Not applicable

SSO

SSO
included
included

Alternate ID

Alternate ID
included
included

OATH hardware tokens

OATH hardware tokens
included
included

Block legacy authentication

Block legacy authentication
included
included

Identity Protection

Identity Protection
not included
included

Identity Governance

Identity Governance
not included
included

Application provisioning

Application provisioning
not included
included

Brute force and DDoS mitigation

Brute force and DDoS mitigation
not included
included

Mitigate on-premises outages

Mitigate on-premises outages
not included
included

Conditional access

Conditional access
not included
included

99.99% uptime

99.99% uptime
not included
included

Migrate to the cloud securely and efficiently

Manage your identities from the cloud

Synchronize on-premises and cloud directories to provide a common identity for users to seamlessly access resources.

Migrate from federation to cloud authentication

Apply intelligent risk-based access policies with conditional access and identity protection by adopting cloud authentication.

Migrate your app authentication to the cloud

Secure and manage all your apps from a single control plane by migrating app authentication and authorization from AD FS to Azure AD.

Hear from those who have already migrated to Azure AD

Durham University.
Gogo Business Aviation.
jetBlue.
gte financial.

"Moving to the cloud with Azure AD has benefitted our employees and our IT department. Our IT department has freed up more resources now that it no longer has to maintain an on-premises server or AD FS."

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Mitsui & Co.
Mitsui & Co.

Get started migrating to Azure AD

Watch the webcast

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How-to guides

Review documentation, solution guides, and tutorials to help you migrate your app and user authentication from AD FS to Azure AD.

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App migration guidance

Explore best practices for migrating apps from AD FS to Azure AD.

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Cloud authentication guidance

Find the right cloud authentication method and migrate from federated authentication.

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More migration resources

Get started with these tools and capabilities to help you migrate from AD FS to Azure AD.

Azure AD Connect Health

Get robust monitoring and insights into your AD FS environment and understand if you’re ready to upgrade to Azure AD.

AD FS Application Activity Report

Quickly identify which AD FS apps are ready for an upgrade and learn on how to configure apps for migration to Azure AD.

Staged rollout to cloud authentication

Migrate user authentication from AD FS to cloud authentication in a staged and controlled manner.