Planning your hybrid environment

Identity is key when planning and implementing a Microsoft 365 environment. While the default identity method within Microsoft 365 is cloud-only, most organizations will need to plan for deploying hybrid identities when introducing Microsoft 365 to their organization. So, what is hybrid identity? Well, in simple terms, it is the process of providing your users with an identity in the cloud that is based on their on-premises identity. There are several ways that this can be achieved, and the available methods will be explained in detail later in this chapter.

The basic principles of hybrid identity in Microsoft 365 are shown in the following diagram:

Figure 1.1 – Hybrid identity

Let's examine how to start planning for hybrid identity in Microsoft 365.

The first step to establishing the correct identity lies in determining the business needs of your organization. It is important, at this stage, to recognize who your stakeholders will be in this process, understand their current working tools and practices, and assess how a modern and agile platform such as Microsoft 365 could be used to enable them to work more efficiently and securely.

The following are some examples of your possible stakeholders:

• Users
• Power users
• IT team
• Compliance team
• Business owners

Each of the given stakeholders will have their own specific challenges that you will need to address. However, your users will obviously account for the highest percentage of your stakeholders and your primary focus will need to be ensuring that any transitions to new ways of working are as seamless as possible. Many users can be very wary of change and how you introduce them to new technologies and working practices is directly tied to the success or failure of your project. If your users buy in to the changes you are introducing and can realize the benefits, then the rest of your stakeholders are also more likely to follow suit.

While your main users will be focused on doing their job, the remaining stakeholders will have a deeper interest in how a Microsoft 365 hybrid environment meets the requirements of the business.

Some of the common business requirements are as follows:

• The modernization of existing IT software
• Providing and securing cloud (SaaS) applications
• Reducing risk by providing a secure identity solution

Let's examine some approaches for addressing these requirements. Examining how on-premises identities are currently provided is a logical starting point that will give you a better understanding of what you need to plan and implement for identity authentication in the cloud. You need to be aware of any current on-premises synchronization solutions that may be in place, including any third-party solutions.

You will also need to consider any existing use of cloud applications in the organization. These will need to be identified and plans made for their continued use, integration, or possible replacement.

Important note

Microsoft Cloud App Discovery can be used to analyze existing SaaS app usage within your organization. Cloud App Discovery and security will be covered in a later chapter in this book.

Understanding your on-premises identity infrastructure will help you to plan for modernization. So, what is modernization considered to be in the world of IT? Well, essentially, it is based on the principle that IT users now wish and expect to be more mobile. They want quick and easy access to their emails and documents anywhere, anytime, and on any device.

This requirement creates the challenge of how to effectively secure and protect the services within the Microsoft 365 platform while ensuring that these services are highly available and accessible to the users.

So, how do we achieve this? It is not possible to wrap a firewall around Microsoft 365 in the traditional sense. Instead, we need to look at the various modern authentication security methods that are available within the Azure AD Premium licensing plans. We will address these methods later on in this chapter, but before this, we will examine the process of establishing your hybrid identity by synchronizing your on-premises AD to Microsoft 365.