Insights

Microsoft have just announced new product names for the Office 365 Business plans, which will be coming into effect 21st April 2020.

Office 365 is split into three main categories: Personal, Business and Enterprise. Microsoft have just announced important name changes to the Office 365 Business subscriptions to bring them into the Microsoft 365 family. As a quick background, Office 365 provides organisations with productivity and collaboration software, such as Teams, SharePoint, Outlook and Office. Meanwhile, Microsoft 365 includes Office 365 as well as Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) and Windows 10 to bring security and management features into the bundle.

What’s changing?

The current changes are only name changes and there are no changes to pricing or features included in each licence.

• Office 365 Business Essentials will become Microsoft 365 Business Basic
• Office 365 Business Premium will become Microsoft 365 Business Standard
• Microsoft 365 Business will become Microsoft 365 Business Premium
• Office 365 Business will become Microsoft 365 Apps for business and Office 365 ProPlus will become Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise

What about Enterprise?

The Enterprise plans are not changing. Office 365 E1, E3 and E5 remain the same, alongside their Academic (A1, A3 & A5), Government (G1, G3 & G5) and Firstline (F1 & F3) SKUs. The firstline offerings have also recently been updated on 1st April 2020.

What does this mean for customers?

If you currently have Office 365 Business Essentials, Business Premium or Microsoft 365 Business then the only change is that you will be your subscription updated to the new name. There is nothing you need to do. You simply need to get familiar with the new name.

Why the change?

When Office 365 launched in 2011, it was Microsoft’s champion product – giving organisations a simple yet powerful way to start realising the benefits of the cloud and revolutionising the workplace with the digital tools to enable modern, mobile collaboration between staff.

Nearly ten years later, and Microsoft 365 is the new champion productivity and security solution. Including Office 365, it adds vital security and management products to the bundle to give organisations a well-rounded package of tools to enable productivity, collaboration, security and IT management. By renaming Office 365 to Microsoft 365, Microsoft are repositioning their focus on Microsoft 365 and away from Office 365 to guide customers to do the same. Perhaps this is the start of some further name changes – we will have to wait and see.

If you have any questions around Office 365 or Microsoft 365, please feel free to get in touch or download our guide to Microsoft 365.