With small to medium size businesses around the world facing unprecedented challenges of consolidating their work force remotely, Microsoft have responded to their need with an exciting set of updates and rebranding to their subscription service. Office 365 subscriptions will now come under the Microsoft 365 brand; however, the move from Microsoft is more than simply a name change. While initially most features will remain the same, Microsoft have laid out their plans to further assist businesses through a range of productivity tools, apps and services, including cutting edge innovations such as AI. Businesses have the chance to embrace all that is set to be rolled out with the rebranded service, with no increase to the current subscription cost. In what has been
referred to by Microsoft as ‘a subscription service for your life’ the changes that accompany the rebranding from Office 365 to Microsoft 365 will assist businesses in the challenging current climate, which is seeing many workers based remotely. The rebranding of current products is as follows;
- 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 and Office 365 ProPlus will both become Microsoft 365 Apps, ‘for business’ and ‘for enterprise’ labels will be used to by Microsoft to distinguish between the two when needed.
With regards to the all important updates to these products in the pipeline, Microsoft said “Microsoft 365 is an integrated set of apps and services that puts AI and other cutting edge innovations to work for you. And for small to medium size businesses, that includes new capabilities to help you host rich meetings and events online; cloud file storage and sharing capabilities so you can collaborate from anywhere; and security and identity solutions to safe guard your business.” Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the functions traditionally thought of as encompassing Microsoft Office, are still available within Microsoft 365, however they will have now have fresh, new, ‘born in the cloud’ functions such as Teams, Streams, Forms, and Planner. Not only that, but Microsoft have announced subscribers will also receive limited-time access to popular apps and premium services from the likes of Adobe, Bark, Blinkist, Creative Live, Experian, Headspace, and TeamSnap. Microsoft says the value of this will exceed £400. The rebranding to Microsoft 365 comes into effect on April 21 2020, with the new features being gradually rolled out to existing Office subscribers. Meanwhile, a number of Office 365 Plans will have no changes, these are;
Office 365 for Enterprise Office 365 E1 Office 365 E3 Office 365 E5
Office 365 for Firstline Workers Office 365 F1
Office 365 for Education Office 365 A1 Office 365 A3 Office 365 A5
Office 365 for Government Office 365 G1 Office 365 G3 Office 365 G5 Existing users of any of the Office 365 plans which are set to change branding to Microsoft 365 do not need to take any action, the changes, including additional functionality will happen automatically, while users will notice the rebranding change on April 21st. If you’re not yet a Microsoft Office subscription user and would like to take advantage of the developments which will accompany the rebranding, you can find out more about our enhanced
Office 365 / Microsoft 365 Packages or call TechCare today on 0333 015 5100 and we will be happy to discuss with you how the new Microsoft 365 could help your business.
