Recently, Microsoft has come out with an announcement on the related changes to our Office 365 subscriptions for small and medium-sized businesses—and to Office 365 ProPlus.
This is a natural evolution for Microsoft. Microsoft 365 start as a licensing bundle for enterprise customers in 2017 – a combination of Windows, Office, and Enterprise Mobility and Security (EMS). It represents Microsoft’s vision for the future of Microsoft productivity tools – an integrated set of apps and services that puts artificial intelligence (AI) and other cutting-edge innovations to work for you.
For a small and medium-sized business, it includes Microsoft Teams which is able to help you host rich meetings with your teams and events online; cloud file storage and sharing capabilities so that you can collaborate with your team anytime and anywhere and security and identity solutions to safeguard your business. Microsoft is pleased to bring small and medium-sized business customers into this growing Microsoft 365 family especially at a moment when most of the businesses are facing extraordinary health and economic challenges.
Office 365: New Product Names
Effective from April 21, 2020, there will be a change on the product name for Office 365 business plans. Please note that this is a change to the product name only, and there are no pricing or feature changes at this time.
Office 365 Business Essentials will become Microsoft 365 Business Basic
Office 365 Business Premium will become Microsoft 365 Business Standard
Office 365 Business will become Microsoft 365 Apps for business
Office 365 ProPlus will become Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise
*Note that the changes to these products will all happen automatically.
Why is Microsoft making these changes?
- Microsoft wants the products to reflect more range of features and benefits in the subscriptions as Microsoft 365 is an integrated set of all apps and services that puts AI and other cutting-edge innovations to work for all of us.
- For small and medium-sized businesses, Microsoft Teams is included to help you host rich meetings and events online. It also provides cloud file storage and sharing capabilities which can help you in collaboration with the team. And the security and identity solutions will be able to safeguard your businesses.
- It is a way to simplify. A new product name approach is designed to help customers find the plan that they need for their business.
How does Office fit into Microsoft 365?
There will be no changes in regard to this as Office suite is a core to the Microsoft productivity experiences. Microsoft cloud productivity offering has grown well beyond what people usually think of as “Office”. Microsoft 365 is breathing new life into these apps with the help of the cloud and AI. It also adds new, born-in-the-cloud experiences like Teams, Stream, Forms, and Planner. All of this is underpinned by a set of common services that keep your data safe and secure.
For more details about the announcement, visit:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/03/30/new-microsoft-365-offerings-small-and-medium-sized-businesses/
