| It is a directory with a lot of functionality. There's actually a number of products under the Azure AD name, including: * Azure AD, their employee/workforce solution. It's a directory, authentication and authorization system. Think Okta or AWS SSO. I imagine this is mostly what the survey was tracking. * Azure AD B2C, their CIAM solution. Think Auth0, Cognito or FusionAuth (disclosure, I'm a FusionAuth employee). * Azure AD EI, external identity management (users outside your org). * Azure AD DS, domain services (older Windows focused services). This subsumes a lot of what Active Directory provided. And they say AWS has a hard time with naming :). You can learn more about each of these here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/active-directory/ (click on the "AAD" dropdown). |
honestly though, Azure's naming strategies do exactly what they say. AWS uses names that are adjacent or completely random (fargate?). i don't even think cognito is a word in english language[0]
[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cognito