Lot of organizations have already moved their users from on-premise Microsoft Exchange to Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365). With the passage of time it has been realized by many that even though Microsoft 365 offers good service and more organizations across the globe continue to move to it, still there is acceptance of the idea that many have moved back to on-premise Exchange.

There may be some who would prefer to keep using both on-premise Exchange and Microsoft 365 cloud and this is called a hybrid configuration. This blog highlights where MachPanel comes into play and how it can be useful for hosting companies, reseller and admins who want to benefit from such hybrid configurations.

The challenge:

Though Microsoft already offer a tool called Azure AD Connect that allows synchronization between On-premise AD and Cloud AD (azure ad), but the problem with that is that it only offers sync between on on-premise AD and a single tenant on the Microsoft 365 side.

Azure AD Connect has a limitation on syncing multiple tenants on hosted platform (On-premise AD implementation for Hosting Purpose) with their respective O365 tenants.

If someone really wants to sync multiple on-premise tenants with their respective Microsoft 365 tenants, they have to install and configure Azure AD Connect on dedicated VM per tenant.

The Solution:

This is where MachPanel Hosted Automation solution with its unique multi-tenant support for synchronization between on-premise AD and Microsoft 365 Azure AD comes into play.

What MachPanel has to Offer:

It offers you a Single interface from where you can build a hybrid relation between your on-premise AD and Azure AD using the MachSol ADSync and MachPanel Control Panel via its Active Directory Module.

There is a centralized control panel web interface that offers you many CRUD operations for users at on-premise and Azure AD simultaneously, giving you the power to play around with certain on-premise Exchange properties as well as O365 licenses per Hybrid User.

The ad user you create gets created not only on the on-premise AD, but it also gets created on the Azure AD side. Any operation you perform on the user via the panel gets applied on both sides. You also get option to enable Microsoft 365 services by activating available licenses, or enable your Hosted Exchange Services from the same interface. So, you get list of all your users in a single interface and get the option to enable any desired services either on-premise or Microsoft 365.

Lastly, any changes you make to your local AD user, they get intercepted by the MachSol ADSync utility and the information is relayed over to the panel from where it is applied over to the associated Azure AD / Microsoft 365 User.

MachPanel Hybrid Management Benefits:

• With this hybrid implementation, you can overcome the AAD Connect limitations for “Hosted Platform Sync with O365” and save a lot of money which you normally would have spent creating dedicated VM per tenant for AAD Connect.
• Your Hosted AD is not Exposed directly to Azure Public Cloud AD, instead MachPanel will Act As a security layer to make this relation and communication monitored and trusted.
• All your Organization/Tenants and their respective AD Users are listed under single interface offering complete control and ease of use.
• You can enable on-premise services offered as hosted service as well as activate Microsoft 365 licenses on your users using MachPanel automation solution interfaces.

Useful link : MachPanel (Hybrid Cloud Management) Step by Step guide.