Updates for Office 365 ProPlus and Office 365 Business are made available on one of two main channels – the Current Channel and the Deferred Channel. If you want some detail on how the releases through these channels are made available and for how long they’re supported, as well as how you choose which channel to be on, then this is a useful article: http://bit.ly/1Ov0l8Q.
Tag Archives: Office 365
Office 365 Education offerings now available in CSP
Microsoft announce that Office 365 Education plans are now available via the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program. Find the full announcement here: http://bit.ly/2a5fi1R.
Windows, EMS and ECS Name Changes
It’s all change! Firstly, Microsoft announce that Windows 10 Enterprise will be renamed to Windows 10 Enterprise E3, and that Windows 10 Enterprise E5 will be introduced which includes Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection.
Then, Enterprise Mobility Suite will be renamed Enterprise Mobility + Security and, again, there will be E3 and E5 flavours of this.
There’s a good diagram here (http://bit.ly/29Cc0Er) which shows you the components of both of these editions.
And finally, the Enterprise Cloud Suite will be called Secure Productive Enterprise E3/E5 containing the relevant Office 365, EM+S and Windows 10 Enterprise plans.
Find the Microsoft announcement here: http://bit.ly/29ur3we.
Office 365 for Business Licence Management
If you’re in charge of managing licences for Office 365 for Business in your organisation then there’s a useful page with a whole host of articles on tasks such as assigning licences to users, and how you license non-user mailboxes.
Find it here: http://bit.ly/28TxpHH.
New Office VL Brief
There’s an updated (June 2016) “Licensing Microsoft Office software in Volume Licensing ” VL Brief which is updated for Office Online Server. This is the successor product to Office Web Apps Server 2013 and provides browser-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote from on-premises environments.
For details on the licensing, the FAQs on page 8 are useful, but in summary: there are no licences required for viewing documents, but create/edit/save rights are an SA benefit and included in an Office 365 ProPlus subscription.
However, there’s an exception which means that licences bought without SA before 1 August 2016 don’t need SA before 1 August 2019.
Find the guide in the Desktop section of our Licensing Guides emporium: http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.
Microsoft Data Centres in Canada
The Microsoft data centres grow again: two data centres are now open in Canada offering Azure and Office 365 with data residency for business customers in Canada, and CRM Online available later this year in Q3. There are also plans for a new data centre region in Seoul, South Korea.
Find the Microsoft announcement here: http://bit.ly/1XLVxPZ and if you’re interested in where customer data is stored for Office 365 and CRM Online, then these interactive maps are worth a look: http://bit.ly/1YQuBwP.
Office 365 Licensing Guide
There’s a new (March 2016) Volume Licensing Brief for Office 365.
This document has useful tables showing you all the Office 365 plans and what’s included in each one, as well as availability in the different channels. Then there’s an overview of the four flavours of USL that customers can choose from:
- Full USL (if you’re a new Online Services customer)
- From SA USL (if you’re transitioning from existing on-premises products with SA)
- Add-on USL (if you’ve got traditional licences and want to try the cloud), and a
- Step Up USL (if you want to go to a higher plan).
Finally, there’s a useful table showing the technical dependencies of some of the Office 365 services.
Find this guide here: http://bit.ly/259poHI.
SharePoint Server 2016 GA
Microsoft announce general availability of SharePoint Server 2016, and confirm that it’s derived from the same code used to deliver SharePoint Online.
What’s the future of the on-premises product? Well, innovations will (as you’d expect) be delivered to Office 365 first, but many will also be available via Feature Packs to SharePoint Server 2016 customers with Software Assurance.
The first Feature Pack will be available through the public update channel in 2017, and customers will have control over which features are enabled in their on-premises farms.
Full details are here: http://bit.ly/1XbKkIb.
Office Online Server Available
Microsoft announce the release of Office Online Server, the successor to Office Web Apps Server 2013.
This product enables you to deliver browser-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote from your on-premises datacentre with the same functionality as Office Online.
Licensing-wise, any customer with a Volume Licensing agreement can download OOS from VLSC at no cost for view-only functionality. If you want create, edit and save functionality then you need an Office licence with active SA or an Office 365 ProPlus subscription. However, if you buy Office 2016 through Volume Licensing before 1 August 2016, then you won’t need SA until 1 August 2019.
Find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/23tSr2y.
Multi-Tenant Office 365 ProPlus
So, if customers have, say, Office 365 E3 licences acquired through an Enterprise Agreement, can Office 365 ProPlus be hosted on their Services Provider’s shared hardware and delivered to the customer through RDS? Mais oui!
This was a change that happened in January 2016 and as long as the Services Provider meets certain conditions required by Microsoft, all is well.
You can read all about this here: http://bit.ly/21BIYqW, or, if you’re a partner wanting to get involved, here’s a webcast to listen to: http://bit.ly/1QndX2M.