David,
Thank you for your helpful reply.
Perhaps I can explain our experience better with a typical example.
A base installation of Windows 8.1 with Office 2013 SP1 includes 3 flavors of OneNote:
-OneDrive: an "app" version that requires login with a Microsoft Account
-OneNote: another "app" version that requires login with a Microsoft Account
-OneNote 2013: a "desktop" version that can be used either as a standalone app on the desktop accessed with on-premises AD credentials or a cloud-connected option that could be accessed with the Office365 credentials
You can imagine the end-user experience when they encounter this for the first time.
Our ideal solution would be to somehow sync our on-prem AD credentials with the Office365 and Microsoft Account credentials to provide a smoother experience for our users.
The documentation on directory integration is good and covers the sync from on-prem AD to Office365 and the related SSO benefits of that. This is what we are investigating and planning to implement.
However, regarding the Microsoft Accounts, I am gathering that:
1. There is no way to programatically/bulk create Microsoft Accounts
2. The only synchronization options for the Microsoft Accounts is to "link" them to the AD account which may be a completely manual process. This is what I'm referreing to: windows.microsoft.com/.../connect-microsoft-domain-account
So.....
Are there any options I'm missing? What are other people doing to smooth the experience for users in cases like ours, particularly regarding the Windows Store and the Microsoft Accounts?