back to article Microsoft whips up unrest after revealing Azure AD name change

Microsoft is causing a stir among some tech pros after confirming it plans to rename Azure AD to Entra. The Entra name was introduced in May last year as the overarching brand for the Identity and Access suite. It included two Entra family products – Permissions Management and Verified ID, and Azure AD, though Azure AD is much …

  1. Franco Bronze badge

    Everyone will still call it Azure AD anyway. It's only been 15 years since Terminal Services were renamed Remote Desktop Services, and I'm still yet to hear the term Remote Desktop Services used by anyone other than pedants or people teaching Microsoft courses.

    See also SCCM, which is still SCCM or just Config Manager in general use, despite being renamed Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager 4 years ago. Office is still Office and not Microsoft 365 Apps for Business as well.

    1. eswan

      Microsoft Operations Manger says hi.

      1. Pascal
    2. jake Silver badge

      "Office is still Office and not Microsoft 365 Apps for Business as well."

      When we're not calling it Office 361 ...

      1. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge
        Joke

        and what about Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise?

        Will it be renamed Microsoft 365 Apps for NCC-1701?

        1. cmdrklarg

          No bloody A, B, C, *or* D.

      2. Rich 2 Silver badge

        “ When we're not calling it Office 361 ...”

        …or just shit

    3. colin79666

      Of course SCCM was SMS. More recently they dropped the “Endpoint” so it has had 4 names since the original incarnation, with many components still referring to the original SMS.

      The only thing that seems to stick with Microsoft is Windows.

      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Of course SCCM was SMS. More recently they dropped the “Endpoint”

        Only because they wanted to re-brand Intune as Endpoint..

        (I remember SMS - when I was doing y2k stuff we used it to push out patches.. Ah the fun we had as suceeding patches either changed the date display rules or broke previous patches. I was mostly doing Unix & firewall patching [1] but still go involved on the Windows side when the poor little dears [2] needed someone with actual technical skills [3] to help..)

        [1] Out of the 40 or so people on that contract, I was the only one that had used anything vaguely unix-like - I'd been using linux for about 5 years by that point. And I'd managed a firewall at my first techie job (put in a 64k leased like with a Sun box running Firewall-1) so was the most qualified person in the team.

        [2] Let's leave it at the fact that most of them were barely-qualified MCSE types and, if they came across anything not covered by their courses, lacked the ability or experience to actually do anything.

        [3] By that point I'd herded DOS, Windows 3+, OS/2 (all flavours), a bit of S/370 herding, Windows NT Server, OS/2 LAN Server, linux (at home).. So I was quite used to OS-context switching (like I am now - my main machine is a Mac but I have work-build Windows VMs for when I need to manage Windows stuff (like SCCM) that isn't done via a web point-n-drool.

      2. Ken G Silver badge
        Windows

        Suggestions for what a rebranded Windows should be called?

        MS Defenestra(tm)?

      3. TRT

        Rubbing a candle in the runners can help with that.

    4. Claptrap314 Silver badge
      Linux

      Ackswually... I've been calling it RDS for years. Oh, wait. I'm not a Windows admin, so I basically only use it when talking about security issues.

      Sorry not sorry!

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Terminal Services

      Yeah, but that is also partially to separate the Citrix and Windows Server based terminal services/application server from the device to device access via the Remote Desktop Client.

      You say Terminal Services you cut three unneeded questions out if people are in the know. So it has stuck around. Not all of the others are as popular with the youts. Though you are damn right about Office just being Office. The 365 branding hasn't and probably won't ever take.

      I feel like the new name is the sort of meaningless and bland made-up word that is perfectly easy to ignore, but it also probably came from the fertile minds(think about that one, not a compliment) of the UI market research team. The sort of people that spend half the year on the talk-circuit and give themselves an award for the business process that successively breaks and ruins the UI in each major version of windows. (that's what happens when you start with the assumption you need to change everything, then ask a bunch of people who don't know anything which new "everything" they will endure while watching the most ads/surveys at a time.)

      1. JohnTill123

        Re: Terminal Services

        "...the fertile minds(think about that one, not a compliment) of the UI market research team."

        Thank you for the laugh, sincerely. I almost needed a new keyboard.

    6. TheBadja

      Azure AD

      Why do marketing types play silly buggers with product names. As a practitioner, many hours of confusion occur because technical meetings at cross purposes as people don’t know if they are talking about the same thing or something different. Not only Microsoft, every vendor does the same.

      1. Mr Smeghead

        Re: Azure AD

        The marketing types play with product names because they have to justify their own existence within the company.

        1. thondwe

          Re: Azure AD

          See also authors Product Licencing and T's and C's

        2. GruntyMcPugh

          Re: Azure AD

          ah, yes, marketing types playing silly buggers,... even once, down to be told what (custom, mind you) font we had to use for all communications. A font. I wonder if they could expense their recreational pharmaceuticals.

          1. JimC

            Re: what font...

            Actually I submit that makes a lot more sense than much marketing b******s. The appearance of documents is a big part of the presentation, and a rag bag of different styles doesn't look great. And besides (to repeat a cliche I think overused) it does mean departments are prohibited from using comic sans. Incidentally I've seen incidences of a company mandating a single font on all its public facing documents as early as the 1920s!

            1. David Nash

              Re: what font...

              Yes corporate fonts and colours is pretty standard stuff.

      2. NightFox

        Re: Azure AD

        Advanced product* naming guide:

        1. Pick a verb associated with the purpose of said product

        2. Stick an 'a' or 'ia' on the end of it.

        Voila. My invoice is in the post.

        *Can also be used to name/rename companies; q.v. Arriva, Consignia

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Azure AD

          Maybe they should rename MS SQL server in a similar manner. As its a back end system that consumes a lot of memory then craps out they could call it "Incontinentia Buttocks"

          1. cmdrklarg

            Re: Azure AD

            Just standardize the pronunciation. It's not 'see quell' anymore, it's 'squeal'!

      3. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: Azure AD

        This change is both unnecessary and wasteful of customers time.

        Just like every other rebranding exercise.

    7. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge
      Trollface

      doesent seem that long ago...

      See also SCCM, which is still SCCM or just Config Manager in general use

      pfft! you kids

      I still call it SMS

      1. Ken G Silver badge

        Re: doesent seem that long ago...

        What do you call text messages?

        Or AWS middleware?

        1. David Nash

          What do you call text messages

          I know the comment wasn't addressed to me but "text messages" of course, as you do!

        2. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge
          Trollface

          Re: doesent seem that long ago...

          well, Twitter is still an interface for short text messages, isn't it?

          with a daily allowance not to exceed before you have to pay?

    8. Fred Daggy Silver badge
      Coat

      SCCM? I still call it SMS.

      But yeah, wish MS would show it a little love. The list of features it supports grows very, very slowly, as for deprecated features, well "Our list of allies grows thin".

      (Where's my greybeard icon, or at least 'get off my lawn')

      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        SCCM? I still call it SMS. But yeah, wish MS would show it a little love

        That's very unlikely - they want everyone to (slowly) migrate to using Intune (or endpoint as they want you to call it) since that's a subscription service..

        We've just started using co-management with SCCM and Intune with the end goal of eventually getting rid of SCCM.

    9. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
      Coat

      Bill Gates is still the face of Microsoft

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Face, yeah.

        Definitely not some other body part.

    10. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I like the new name

      "Permissions Management and Verified ID" - or PERVI for short.

    11. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      And if you search for RDS you will get AWS Relational Database Services

      1. jake Silver badge

        Odd ...

        ... using DDG, the first six options when I search "RDS" are for Respiratory Distress Syndrome ... I would never have guessed this. I guessed Reliable Datagram Sockets would be near the top; it wasn't. I was actually hoping to see Random Dot Stereogram, at least by the second page, but no ...

  2. jake Silver badge

    All I can say is ...

    ... that I'm ever so glad I stopped caring about "Microsoft product experiences" (whatever the fuck that means!) thirteen and a half years ago.

    Companies who pay more attention to marketing than they do the engineering of their actual product line are to be avoided at all costs.

    1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: All I can say is ...

      Yeah, but such designs show the level of engineering and thereby generate job security in supporting a product that breaks often.

    2. NeilPost

      Re: All I can say is ...

      ‘Entra’ is also a terrible brand too. More Veet than Verizon. Feels like someone used an on-line Brand Generator.

      Azure Welcome, Azure Auth, Azure Authenticate, Azure Verify, Azure Hello, Azure Sentinel.

      Azure Gandalf … “thou shall not pass”…

      1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge

        Re: All I can say is ...

        Ebola rolls off the tongue more easily

      2. Missing Semicolon Silver badge

        Re: All I can say is ...

        Wasn't this when Azure was new, so MS had to stuff the word into as many brands as possible?

        1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

          Re: All I can say is ...

          Be grateful it isn't AzureX 365.

    3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: All I can say is ...

      "Microsoft product experiences" (whatever the fuck that means!)

      A them park ride? At least that's my best guess. My personal experience of Microsoft products is that when they work, they are ok. When they don, it's a fucking nightmare!!! But I don't think I have actual day-to-day "Microsoft product experiences". I do a job, I have tools to do that job. I don't give a fuck who created those tools if and when they work. I'd prefer to choose my own tools, but I have an employer who mandates which tools I use, so I just put up with the shit when it shows it's evil little turd brained "experiences".

  3. FILE_ID.DIZ
    Facepalm

    Microsoft must have hired the former marketing department of Citrix...

    ...who notoriously renamed EVERYTHING every few years. Apparently to justify their existence.

    1. NeilPost

      Re: Microsoft must have hired the former marketing department of Citrix...

      VP BusyWork obvs !!!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Microsoft must have hired the former marketing department of Citrix...

      Citrix probably got them from IBM.

    3. Michael Strorm Silver badge

      Re: Microsoft must have hired the former marketing department of Citrix...

      Nah, Microsoft are perfectly capable of that on their own, and this isn't anything new for them- quite the opposite.

      Renaming the same thing 27 different times, or using the same name for 27 different things- or both, for maximum confusion- has been a hallmark of Microsoft's marketing for decades now.

      (e.g. "Microsoft account" AKA "Microsoft Passport" AKA ".NET Passport" AKA "Windows Live ID", and that's probably far from the worst example.)

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dream job.

    This is just the kind of pointless word salad work at which a global replace AI should be able to excel.

    1. Ahosewithnoname

      Re: Dream job.

      I think you meant excel365

  5. bryces666

    UI

    Presumably they will also have to totally screw with the user interface to be sure you can't find shit again to line up with their philosophy of change for changes sake.

    1. SVD_NL Silver badge

      Re: UI

      They've already done that! Azure AD portal and Entra portal exist side by side and depending on how you get there you'll end up on a different one.

      To be fair, the layout is exactly the same, the UI just looks slightly different. They at least did a better job at than they are doing with their exchange, security, and compliance portals... I genuinely get lost in those, its like a constantly shifting labyrinth.

      1. Nick Ryan

        Re: UI

        Not helped that pretty much all the online documentation and help references are out of date within a month or two.

      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: UI

        Yeah, part of my job now involves using InTune so I'm finding my way around it with some corporate documentation and I come across something that looks "wrong". Just above the "wrongness" that my documentation shows as looking different is a "helpful" note from MS telling me I'm seeing the "new look" and to "click here for the old-style look". Thanks MS. Trying to learn a new and complex bit of software while you're changing the interfaces, live, from under me really makes me "love" the "user experience". You bastards!!

  6. Excused Boots Silver badge

    ‘We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralisation‘

    A phrase sometimes attributed to one Petronius, a Roman Senator, who lived in the first century, although it now appears to be no earlier than 1959 and written by an American called Charlton Ogburn.

    Either way, the practice of ‘reorganise or rename’ for its own sake, isn’t entirely modern.

    1. jake Silver badge

      It's not for its own sake, it's to enrich those in power.

      See early xtians reorganizing and renaming icons of various extant religions and making coin off it.

      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        renaming icons of various extant religions and making coin off it.

        Nostril-hairs of St. Ignatious the Bald! Get yer nostril hairs here? Get 'em while they are still warm!

        1. jake Silver badge

          That would be a relic, not an icon.

  7. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

    To Marketing: a Boot to the Head!

    See title.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g1Z3V0QBpg

    1. FILE_ID.DIZ
      Facepalm

      Re: To Marketing: a Boot to the Head!

      Need an upgraded video. Apparently there's a thing called "Power Slap". Was at the local watering hole last Friday and this was on one of the TVs.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDQaq0_cqAg

      --> Because obviously that'd be an own goal in Power Slap?

      1. Crypto Monad Silver badge

        Re: To Marketing: a Boot to the Head!

        Perhaps Microsoft could try marketing advice from plain-speaking Yorkshireman, George Whitebread:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY4tD2Hbg_A

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Keep calm

    and carry on using PowerShell. If we don’t use their stupid, ever-changing front ends, we’ll be fine.

    1. eswan

      Re: Keep calm

      PowerShell or PowerShell Core?

      1. NeilPost

        Re: Keep calm

        V2, V5 or V7 and which console??

      2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: Keep calm

        PowerShell or PowerShell Core?

        Nah. Bash shell. *Much* less confusing and prone to random capitalisations..

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Keep calm

      But the online modules keep getting replaced, for no apparent benefits

  9. Bump in the night
    Facepalm

    We apologize in advance ...

    ... for any inconvenience caused by our greed and arrogance.

    have to go, I've got to get back to SkyDrive, er OneDrive, er Office for the web, er Office Online, er Office365 and then I have to figure out which Acrobat . . . .

    1. NeilPost

      Re: We apologize in advance ...

      Being fair UK/Euro Pay-TV outfit Sky TV (now part of Comcast/NBC Universal) somehow won a trademark dispute many years ago and SkyDrive was rebranded OneDrive.

      1. katrinab Silver badge

        Re: We apologize in advance ...

        And at the time owned by Rupert Murdoch / News International / Fox.

        As well as their TV service, they do own an ISP under the Sky brand, so that puts them in the same business sector.

      2. Bump in the night

        Re: We apologize in advance ...

        right you are, a thumbs up. However I forgot Office Live.

  10. ecofeco Silver badge

    The Microsoft credo

    What's the hardest way to do something? Let's do that!

    1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: The Microsoft credo

      And give it a cool name.

      Like Microsoft Entrails.

      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: The Microsoft credo

        Like Microsoft Entrails.

        Ah - is that their new Soothsaying product? I like me a good haruspice..

      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: The Microsoft credo

        "Like Microsoft Entrails."

        I couldn't quite work out why "Entra" didn't sound right and seemed to have negative connotations. It just felt "wrong". But seeing you spell it out as "Entrails" just nailed it. Maybe my subconscious was adding the "ils" and screaming "noooo, keep it away from me" down in the reptilian part of my brain :-)

        1. David 132 Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: The Microsoft credo

          > It just felt "wrong". But seeing you spell it out as "Entrails" just nailed it. Maybe my subconscious was adding the "ils" and screaming "noooo, keep it away from me" down in the reptilian part of my brain :-)

          So what you're saying is, you had a gut feeling about it?

      3. Paul Herber Silver badge

        Re: The Microsoft credo

        Needs a colon ...

        Microsoft Entrails:

  11. razorfishsl

    Dump the name dump the shame....

    More worrying is the fact that they are adding in links to their services & websites that only work on their browser.

    Just waiting for them to pull that shit on BI.

  12. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

    "general manager of product marketing"

    "general manager of product marketing" alone is enough to know: Only bullshit reasons.

    Oldest trick in Propaganda: Rename it to advertising. Rename it to marketing. Rename it to public relations. But it is still propaganda.

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: "general manager of product marketing"

      >Nechaeva jumped into the comments section to say the name change decision "wasn't taken lightly."

      Marketing department needed to justify its existence or suffer a budget cut or headcount reduction; what better than to commit to a huge and unnecessary rebranding campaign…

      The marketing equivalent to what Sinofsky did to the Windows UI/UX…

  13. Candy
    WTF?

    Distancing products from each other

    Not quite sure I understand how this is supposed to work but the first thing that springs to mind is that MS wants to distance "Entra" further from the rest of the Azure portfolio and from on-prem traditional AD. It seems like this could be a move towards unbundling IDaaS from azure Iaas and PaaS while putting clear space between Entra and legacy on-prem infrastructure.

    Could this be the start of a broader IDaaS play integrating with more clouds and SaaS providers. You know, the "meeting the customer where they are" playbook?

    Feel free to tell me I'm an idiot.

    1. NeilPost

      Re: Distancing products from each other

      Start of a broader monetising play you mean.

      1. thondwe

        Re: Distancing products from each other

        So the bundle is heading towards being the Cloudy version of MIM (Microsoft Identity Manager for those with longish memories) - so could have been Azure Identity Manager or Identity 365, but no we get "Entra(ils)"

  14. Sudosu Bronze badge

    Entra

    Short for Entrapment?

    1. David 132 Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Entra

      Like all these focus-group whalesong-inspired modern brands, it sounds like it could equally be

      a) a pokemon

      b) a prescription drug (“Suffer from erectile dysfunction? Ask your doctor if Entra is right for YOU!”), or

      c) a feminine hygiene product.

      1. cookieMonster

        Re: Entra

        Or a sex toy, oh …..

    2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: Entra

      Short for Entrapment?

      entrail

      NOUN

      1. a twist or entanglement

      VERB (transitive)

      2. to twist or entangle

      They obviously ran out of letters 3 before the end of the scribble on the whiteboard..

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Entra

        "They obviously ran out of letters 3 before the end of the scribble on the whiteboard.."

        The DryMarker dried up? Typical marketing wonks can't understand technology enough to put the cap back on?

      2. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

        Re: Entra

        entrails

        noun

        plural noun: entrails; plural noun: entrail

        a person's or animal's intestines or internal organs, especially when removed or exposed.

  15. BPontius

    Microsoft just enjoys stirring the pot. Can't leave well enough alone, have to make unnecessary changes and convoluted processes. Couldn't just add those functions into Azure as a cluster of functions like Office with Word, Excel, PowerPoint...etc, why change the name of an established product? Dumb!!

    1. david 12 Silver badge

      It's not just enjoyment. Those marketeers who've got any sense at all recognize that, in spite of protests, their consumers -- developers, sys admins, supply officers, middle management -- choose and are willing to pay for "change" and "improvement" and "engagement" and even "needless complexity".

      People get real pleasure out of change and aesthetic complexity. As they do out of stability and simplicity.

      It's the balance of life as well as the life of commerce.

      1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

        Well, when you can't be part of the solution, there's tons of money to be made expanding the problem.

      2. ChoHag Silver badge

        Subtle distinction:

        Officers and management pay for the changes. Developers and sysadmins are paid to implement the changes.

        > People get real pleasure out of change and aesthetic complexity.

        Otherwise known in these parts as a paycheque.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It won’t work

    Just look at the folks still calling the new IBM i Power servers the “AS/400”

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It won’t work

      Wait. i Power ? I thought it was System i ? Or Power i ? Anyway, I indeed still call it as400, and I’m even under 50. Oddly enough anyone who actually works with the buggers, including resellers, does the same.

      As for MS : does that mean we’ll be talking about Entrasync soon ? What about ADFS ? That might be a tricky one…

      Apart from the confusion the name itself does niot “feel” right. Somewhat invasive. Almost as if an overpaid marketing agency saw a Latin word that seemed cool and just went with that.

  17. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    Outages, bugs, etc. will henceforth be called...

    Entra Ills

    Aka Entrails.

    Edit: I see someone's already beaten me to it. (Do companies really not think about how they can be parodied when they come up with these names?)

  18. DBAosaurus

    Socrates said:

    "The name of a thing is not the same as the thing itself."

    1. StewartWhite Bronze badge
      Holmes

      Re: Socrates said:

      Ceci n'est pas une pipe

  19. DCdave
    Thumb Down

    If you have to rename something...

    Rename Active Directory as Active Directory Classic, or Classic Active Directory, and keep Azure Active Directory as it is. I've already forgotten what they want to rename AAD as. Something like Entrada*

    Which, on double-checking, probably isn't what they want.

  20. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

    Manglement loves this sort of meaningless waste of time (=money).

  21. annabellrx

    "Devs warn of the hours to correct documentation"

    This implies the company already had updated documentation or any documentation in the first place! Documentation is the last thing teams will update anyway from my experience

    I find companies have written basic documents starting a new project but then they remain to gather virtual dust for years.....lol

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Entrails ?

  23. s. pam
    Facepalm

    Entra is the name of a new pre-penetration lubricant

    Oh the irony of the bad drugs the Mktg folks must be on...! They'll need serious addiction attention soon!

  24. disgruntled yank Silver badge

    Ask your doctor about Entra

    It sounds like one of those products that is advertised on American TV, with commercials showing cheerful persons of middle age. Perhaps that is because it is somewhere between "Ensure" and "enteric".

  25. 43300 Silver badge

    "One that was more positive in tone came from techie dieknet who reckons past name changes by Microsoft didn't make sense but this does. "Azure Active Directory sounds way too similar to Active Directory, even though it's a completely different product."

    Really not true - both local AD and AAD perform the pretty much the same basic functions, i.e. user and device identification / authentication. In a hybrid setup, they are even linked so that the objects within them synchronise. Sure, there are differences and things in Azure AD which aren't in local AD, but that doesn't make them "completely different"

  26. Zippy´s Sausage Factory
    Facepalm

    Ah yes, let's rename lots of disprate entities into one over-arching and confusing brand. There's no way this could possibly go wrong, is there?

  27. navarac Silver badge

    Renaming

    I wonder if Marketing have got in on the act? Microsoft are perpetually renaming stuff, usually for no real good reason. Microsoft's branding has been a joke for years.

    1. Nick Ryan

      Re: Renaming

      Microsoft are past masters of ruining branding. They took the well-known and used hotmail branding and murdered it to, eventually, become "office.com". With lots of dangling and inconsistent email addresses with or without the same domain names along the way. Same with Skype, it was well known, well used and it pretty much became a verb. Therefore they replaced it with a huge, inefficient unstable resource hog named "Teams" which really doesn't reflect anything other than office use.

      1. 43300 Silver badge

        Re: Renaming

        Then we have 'Outlook' referring to both an email client program and a consumer email service, and a thing called 'Teams' in W11 which isn't what most business users recognise as Teams (and they are mutually incompatible).

  28. FirstTangoInParis Silver badge

    Just stop now

    Having been involved in product naming, it takes 2 years or so to clear all the legal hurdles, including a 6 month wait period when your new funky name can be challenged by those who care about such stuff.

    But …. Trying to admin MS365 using all these management apps all called weird names and trying to remember them, then getting emails from the said app and wondering what it’s going on about…. Please just call them Directory Manager or Mail server manager so us admins can actually pull up the right app for the job!

    1. Paul Herber Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Just stop now

      'Having been involved in product naming, it takes 2 years or so to clear all the legal hurdles, including a 6 month wait period when your new funky name can be challenged by those who care about such stuff.'

      If you'd been in marketing as long as I have you'd have realised the most important thing to decide is what colour it's going to be.

      1. Diogenes8080

        Re: Just stop now

        Microsoft even get that wrong, to point of having two blue buttons in place of a blue one and a yellow one.

  29. Dave559

    Bong

    I'm absolutely sure that the name change was worth every single one of the many dollars (and other compensations) that they paid Steve Bong to envision such a paradigm-shifting enterprise-aligned future-ready dynamic… oh, I give up… oh, wait… nomenclature solution (whew, for a moment there, I thought my word-flannelling was about to fail me…)

    Or, maybe they just asked amanfromMars 1 to come up with the name? He seems to know a lot about advanced command and control disruptive alien technology systems…

  30. Nick Ryan

    Stupid names...

    About as stupid as "Microsoft Viva Learning Seeded".

    Viva, which seems to cover a random assortment of things, "Learning" which does make some sense but what the hell "seeded" is meant to mean I've yet to figure. Needless to say, Microsoft's own documentation is all over the place when it comes to this and on top of this, just trying to administer this unfinished half-baked mess is the usual frustration. For example, go to the Microsoft Teams Viva app management page (because it's now an App commingled into Teams, of course) and one gets directed to the Microsoft 365 administrator interface. Go to the Microsoft 365 administrator and one gets directed back to the Microsoft Team's app management page. FFS. Turns out that one has to assign as regular, licensed user as a "Knowledge administrator" and then that user has to sign into Microsoft Viva on Teams and from there can manage the content. Except some of the content may, or may not, appear, it depends on how the app is behaving. I added three "knowledge sources" and so far two of them have arrived.

    The extra stupid in this mess? I added LinkedIn Learning as as Knowledge Source (owned by Microsoft), tried to access a course and get presented with a black screen with a popup telling me that I might need to click on an icon in the top right corner. There is no icon there, of course.

    Sometimes I wonder if the developers who spew out this nonsense ever test even a tiny bit, let alone anything going past the (now fired) QA teams.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Stupid names...

      Agile/Scrum tools actively prevent testing. They all have a hidden assumption that QA doesn't exist, only unit tests.

      Sure, you can try to track actual testing this way, but the tool will actively get in your way and make your "velocity" completely unpredictable, thus defeating the entire point.

  31. Ryan D

    Brought to you by

    The genius team behind windows 8 (at least that would be my guess)

  32. ap011013

    Entra = renta

    Surely a typo…

    Renta AD

    Renta CDN

    Renta Backup or Renta Ghost

  33. Allan 9

    I used "Microsoft Entra" in a document last week ... spell checker changed it to "Microsoft Encarta" which caused quite a lot of confusion!

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      If you allow your spill chucker to make changes for you automatically, or worse, habitually click on the first suggestion, you get all you deserve :-)

    2. Smirnov

      spell checker changed it to "Microsoft Encarta"

      Funny enough, Encarta was actually quite good, un-typical for Microsoft I know.

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: spell checker changed it to "Microsoft Encarta"

        That's because Encarta wasn't Microsoft's. It was the CD version of the 120+ year old Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia.

        1. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

          Re: That's because * wasn't Microsoft's.

          Hmm, IIRC there aren't actually very many products that don't fit in place of that asterisk

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Microsoft enteritis, they picked a really Sh*te name. :-)

  35. Stuart Castle Silver badge

    I'd like to someone from Microsoft marketing to explain exactly how changing the name makes it easier to navigate what is available.

    I suspect the real reason is that the name "Entra" is a made up word, that just sounds a little like "Entrance". As such, it can probably be trademarked or copyrighted, whereas "Azure" can't. Lot of potential royalties, and the ability to sue anyone doing something you don't like, but using your name.

    1. jake Silver badge

      As someone alluded to earlier, entra is Latin for enter.

      If they'd have been a trifle quicker with their crayons, they could have used it to rename the start button ... Although knowing Microsoft, they'd have put it on the trash/recycle/whatever icon instead.

  36. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

    This isn't going to directly cause a problem for devs...

    ...it'll cause a problem for sales teams when all the documentation (such as it is) is suddenly talking about setting up accounts in something that no longer appears to exist in their demo environments, and then us devs will have to be wheeled in to move their mouse pointers for them.

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Entra better than Azure

    Not surprised Microsoft wants to retire the Azure brand, after all it's mostly known for being an insecure mess of wobbly software which has the by far worst uptimes of any cloud solution out there.

    "Entra" is a good choice as a new brand as it sounds like "entry level" and that's about the best of how the quality of Microsoft products and services can be described as without having to resort to outright lying, This name change also helps to avoid Microsoft's customers living under any illusion that any of Microsoft's offerings could even be close to be considered fit for purpose for use in a business/enterprise environment.

    But then, looking at Microsoft's track record and the fact that, despite this long history of incompetence, businesses are still willing to enslave themselves to Microsoft's shit, I'm not very optimistic that even more honestly named branding will change the behavior of pointy haired decision makers.

    Still, it's an appropriate brand name, short of something even more descriptive like "ShitCloud".

    1. ChoHag Silver badge

      Re: Entra better than Azure

      > after all it's mostly known for being an insecure mess of wobbly software

      This has never, ever, adversely affected Microsoft.

  38. C Yates

    "there are zero changes to Azure AD capabilities, APIs, login URLs"

    Then why change the f******g name!?

    GAH!

    I'd only just started the MS learn stuff.

    The main thing I "learned" was that I really wanted to give the idiot coming up with all of these stupid names a slap.

  39. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge
    Trollface

    In an unrealted annoucement

    The Active Directory Administrative Center and the Active Directory Users and Computers console have been updated to remove access to the "User logon name(Pre-Windows 2000)" field.

    It still remains mandatory however when creating an account in your local AD.

  40. Diogenes8080

    Setting the bar

    In all fairness, it's not the worst decision Microsoft have made.

    <post your points of derision in detail, please>

  41. axbu89

    Ugh, Microsoft might be as bad as vmware for this crap

  42. vBuck

    Another Excuse to limit features

    I have been watching this play out for for a few years now. For example a G3 account used to have enough features to meet compliance and now most of the compliance features are removed with a product rename. Security features that were available before are suddenly in windows defender add on. Rename the app , strip the features and force everyone in to a higher subscription rates. My old security score was well over 90% and after the change dropped to 30% with the previous settings moved to a new add on that I don't have a subscription for. Security takes a back seat as far as money is concerned.

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