Microsoft has officially started communicating the future transition from Microsoft Entra Connect Sync toward the cloud-native Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync model.
While the phased rollout will only begin from July 2026, the announcement is already highly relevant for organizations running hybrid Microsoft environments today. Especially because not every current setup is fully compatible with Cloud Sync yet.
For many IT teams, this is not an urgent migration project today, but this is an important signal about where Microsoft’s identity, endpoint and infrastructure strategy is heading in the coming years.
Executive summary
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Microsoft wants to gradually move organizations away from the traditional Entra Connect Sync architecture toward Entra Cloud Sync, a lighter and more cloud-managed synchronization model between:
According to Microsoft, the goal is to:
The migration will happen in phases.
Initially, Microsoft will only target organizations whose environments are already fully supported by Entra Cloud Sync. More advanced or complex hybrid environments will transition later, once additional capabilities become available.
The biggest nuance in this announcement is that Entra Cloud Sync does not yet support every scenario currently handled by Entra Connect Sync. And that is particularly important for organizations with hybrid device management strategies.
Today, many organizations still rely heavily on:
Many organizations are not only dependent on domain-joined devices, but also on legacy applications, file shares, authentication mechanisms and business-critical workloads that still require traditional Active Directory integration.
However, Cloud Sync currently does not offer the same level of support for certain device synchronization scenarios and advanced hybrid configurations.
Microsoft’s own readiness overview already highlights several scenarios that still require Entra Connect Sync today, including:
This means many organizations will not immediately be part of Microsoft’s initial migration waves.
Beyond the technical synchronization changes, Microsoft’s announcement also reflects a broader long-term strategy.
Over the past years, Microsoft has consistently been moving organizations toward:
This evolution aligns with technologies and approaches such as:
Microsoft explicitly positions this transition around:
For many organizations, this does not mean abandoning hybrid environments overnight, but it does reinforce the direction Microsoft is taking across the broader Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
No need for panic: Organizations currently using Entra Connect Sync are not suddenly at risk. Microsoft has already confirmed that organizations relying on unsupported scenarios will not be targeted in the initial migration phases.
That means there is still time to:
In practice, the impact will differ significantly depending on the environment:
In some cases, migration toward Entra Cloud Sync may also require infrastructure or design changes, so proper preparation matters.
Rather than rushing into migration projects, organizations should first focus on visibility and readiness.
Useful starting points include:
Most importantly, organizations should start defining their longer-term identity strategy:
The transition from Entra Connect Sync to Entra Cloud Sync is not just a synchronization update.
It is part of a broader evolution toward:
Organizations that understand this shift early will be better positioned to make gradual, strategic decisions rather than reactive infrastructure changes later on.
For many environments, Entra Connect Sync will remain necessary for the foreseeable future, but Microsoft’s long-term direction is becoming increasingly clear.
As a trusted Microsoft Solution Partner, our experts can help you optimise your Microsoft environment and prepare for upcoming changes.
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| Jarne Creten Senior System Engineer |
Pierre Bernolet Technical Engineer |
Dylan Pylyser System Engineer |