Microsoft Releases Azure AD Connect Tool - MSDigest.net

Microsoft has finally Released the AD Connect Tool for General Availability (GA), the tool has long awaited by many. The tool has been on the way and in public beta (Preview) since late 2014. This new tool is the latest in the generation of identity synchronization tools for Azure AD (Office 365). This new version replaces DirSync and Azure AD Sync Tool.

AD Connect will be the tool to integrate your on-premises directories with Azure AD and can help make your users more productive by providing a common identity for accessing both cloud and on-premises resources.

With this integration users and organizations can take advantage of the following:

Organizations can provide users with a common hybrid identity across on-premises or cloud-based services leveraging Windows Server Active Directory and then connecting to Azure Active Directory.
Administrators can provide conditional access based on application resource, device and user identity, network location and multifactor authentication.
Users can leverage their common identity through accounts in Azure AD to Office 365, Intune, SaaS apps and third-party applications.
Developers can build applications that leverage the common identity model, integrating applications into Active Directory on-premises or Azure for cloud-based applications
Azure AD Connect makes this integration easy and simplifies the management of your on-premises and cloud identity infrastructure.

Together with the release of Azure AD Connect, Microsoft has also release a new tool: Azure AD Connect Health.

Azure AD Connect Health helps you monitor and gain insight into your on-premises identity infrastructure. It offers you the ability to view alerts, performance, usage patterns, configuration settings, enables you to maintain a reliable connection to Office 365 and much more. This is accomplished using an agent that is installed on the targeted servers.

Download the Azure AD Connect