Microsoft have finally announced per-device licensing of Office 365 Pro Plus* for commercial organisations – following its introduction to the education EES agreement last year. Coming, like a Hollywood blockbuster, in “summer 2020” – this is something that some organisations have been waiting on for a LONG time – particularly in verticals such as retail and manufacturing.
How to use it
As ever, there are conditions to its availability:
- Only available as an add-on license
- Only available via EA/EAS
- Device must be Windows 10 – version 1803 or later
- Office Pro Plus must be version 1907 or later
- Device must be Azure Active Directory (AD) or hybrid AD joined
and there are various steps that need to be taken to enable it, including group policy changes.
I’ve long said that Microsoft would do this one day as a big portion of their customers wanted it and a sizeable chunk of potential cloud business was being blocked. If you’re a Microsoft customer who’s been holding out on moving to the cloud, expect a call from your friendly neighbourhood partner soon 😊
You can read further and get more details on the various technical pre-requisites here – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/device-based-licensing
*As per this MS post here, Office 365 Pro Plus is now renamed “Microsoft 365 Apps” 🙄
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 