This FAQ details Microsoft’s plan to combine Windows 10 and Office apps in two business-focused software-as-service offerings. Microsoft Enterprise 365 and Microsoft 365 Business will be available later this year.
Earlier this week, Microsoft introduced two additional software-as-a-service subscription plans to the partners who will try to sell them.
The pair join an increasing number of subscription deals that the Redmond, Wash. company has modeled on the Office 365 pattern. The new plans even carry the «365» label, which Microsoft sees as a unifying identifier.
Microsoft 365 is, as CEO Satya Nadella introduced it Monday, «a fundamental departure in how we think about product creation, » composed of, initially at least, two plans. The more expensive, Microsoft 365 Enterprise, is simply a new name for a year-old, two-tier product titled «Secure Productive Enterprise E3» and «Secure Productive Enterprise E5.» Those SKUs (stock-keeping units) were introduced at Microsoft’s 2016 partner conference. Like SPE, M365 Enterprise tosses Windows 10 Enterprise, Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility + Security into a bucket.
But «Microsoft 365 Business, » or M365 Business for short, is the more interesting of the two plans because it is actually new. Nadella thought the same. «I’m so excited about the product innovation that you will see today around small and medium-sized businesses, » he said during a two-hour keynote before partners.
M365 Business includes:
Office 365 Business Premium, a software-and-service plan that includes all the Office applications, hosted Exchange email, OneDrive storage service and more. Alone, Office 365 Business Premium costs $12.50 per user per month when billed on an annual basis.
Windows 10 Pro: Devices currently running Windows 7 Professional or Windows 8.1 Pro may be upgraded to Windows 10 Pro under M365 Business.
Windows 10 Business: According to Microsoft, «Windows 10 Business is a set of cloud- [based] services and device management capabilities that complement Windows 10 Pro and enable the centralized management and security controls of Microsoft 365 Business.» The services and tools include a subset of those from Intune, Microsoft’s enterprise mobility management (EMM) platform, as well as Windows AutoPilot, an automated deployment service bundled with Windows 10’s March 2017 feature upgrade, aka 1703 and Creators Update .
That’s $7.50 per user per month more than Office 365 Business Premium, or an extra $90 per user annually. For that amount, customers receive the difference between the two plans: the upgrade to Windows 10 Pro and the various management service components.
Although companies of any size can purchase M365 Business licenses, any one customer can buy no more than 300 subscriptions, another signal that it aims at small and medium-sized organizations.
The limited management tools also play to that theme. They’re designed to be easy to use and offer only basic functionality, and are accessed via simple control panels similar to what they may have already used for Office 365.
Microsoft’s descriptions of this component are sketchy thus far. An extensive company Q&A on the subscription plan had the most information, saying, «If you have devices that are licensed for Windows 7,8 and 8.1 Professional, Microsoft 365 Business provides an upgrade to Windows 10 Pro.» (The «Professional» label holds for Windows 7, but 8 and 8.1 are dubbed «Pro» instead, as is Windows 10.)
Computerworld was unable to unearth additional details of the upgrade, specifically what happens when a customer cancels a M365 Business subscription or lets one expire. Do devices that were upgraded from Windows 7 Professional to Windows 10 Pro retain the latter license? Or is the Windows 10 license revoked, forcing customers to reinstall the previous OS?
Later, Microsoft confirmed that the upgrade licenses to Windows 10 Pro will remain in place. That’s true even if the customer doesn’t eventually transition to a paid plan after using the preview.
«Customers will be able to keep their upgraded license to Windows 10, » a company spokeswoman said in an email reply to questions about M365 Business, including the preview that began Aug. 2.
The confirmation that customers will preserve their upgraded licenses means that Microsoft sees M365 Business as yet another way to get Windows 10 onto more PCs. More specifically, Microsoft probably views the plan as a foot in the door, a precursor to the customer subscribing to the more expensive and inclusive Microsoft 365 Enterprise.
What Microsoft calls «a simplified management console» controls device and user management functions. The tools bundled in M365 Business include:
Although there is no charge for the preview, Microsoft recommended that potential customers contact their preferred Microsoft Partner — or locate one — to handle the M365 Business deployment.
The other major precondition for the subscription — Azure Active Directory (AAD) — is necessary to enforce user and device policies set in the management console, and for other tasks, such as AutoPilot set-up. Microsoft acknowledged that on-premises Active Directory works with M365 Business, but «it is not recommended.»
