Microsoft Entra Launches (May 2022): Identity Becomes Its Own Product Family

Retrospective: this article looks back at events from May 2022, written in 2026 with the benefit of hindsight.

In May 2022, Microsoft announced Microsoft Entra, a new product family for identity and access. Azure Active Directory became part of Entra, and in July 2023 it was renamed Microsoft Entra ID.

What the family included

At launch, Entra brought together:

• Azure Active Directory — the core identity platform (later Entra ID).
• Entra Permissions Management — cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) across Azure, AWS and GCP, from the CloudKnox acquisition. (Microsoft later announced its retirement.)
• Entra Verified ID — decentralized, verifiable credentials.

The family later expanded with Entra ID Governance (lifecycle, access reviews, entitlement management), Entra Workload ID (identities for apps and services), Entra External ID (customer identity) and Global Secure Access (Entra Internet Access and Private Access, Microsoft's security service edge).

Why it mattered

The rebrand reflected a strategic message: identity was the new security perimeter. Instead of a feature of Azure, identity became its own product line spanning employees, partners, customers, workloads and network access.

The practical impact

For customers, the change mainly brought new names — and new licensing SKUs. The functions they already used didn't change overnight. But the broader portfolio made it easier to address identity governance, workload identities and zero trust network access within one ecosystem.

In hindsight

Entra's direction proved sound: identity-based attacks dominated the following years, and features like phishing-resistant authentication, token protection, workload identity protection and, in 2025, Entra Agent ID for AI agents all grew within the Entra family.