At the Microsoft Inspire conference back in July 2017 Microsoft 365 was announced. In essence, it is a combination of 3 core products – Office 365, Windows 10 and part of the Enterprise Mobility Suite.
Microsoft 365 will come in two flavours – Business and Enterprise with different capabilities an inclusions as you can see from the following table.
The Microsoft 365 Enterprise plans are further broken up to an Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3 and Enterprise E5 offering. The prices shown in this table are US$.
Currently, the Microsoft 365 Enterprise offerings are available for purchase while it is expected the Microsoft 365 Business plans will be available before calendar (2017) year’s end. You can however, apply to obtain a trial of Microsoft 365 Business and you should do so through your distributor.
The power of Microsoft 365 is that it extends the functionality of Office 365 to environments that are moving more and more to the cloud. Doing so means many of the devices that access information are no longer inside or connected to a traditional network. This means a different set of tools and capabilities needs to be adopted to manage and secure this environment.
Likewise, customers expectations are to be up and running quickly with the latest software, no matter where they are and no matter what device they are all on. IT also expects to be able to manage and secure these devices and information from a single location. These are the benefits Microsoft 365 brings users and IT.
Technology is no longer about single monolithic solutions loosely coupled together. It is about making life easier and more productive for users and IT. It means being able to do all this via a single login and from a single console. That is what Microsoft 365 provides.
You’ll still get all the flexibility of Office 365, like the ability to mix and matches licenses with Microsoft 365. You’ll also get access to the latest updates and features of the products now and into the future and if you are a reseller you’ll also get the opportunity to help your customers solver more business challenges from within the Microsoft stack. This means more opportunity for your business.
I really like that Microsoft 365 brings together the best of Office 365 and Azure for customers. It does all this via a single identity and a feature set that continues to improve. If you haven’t as yet, take a look at Microsoft 365.
CIAOPS 