Secure Productive Enterprise

The Enterprise Cloud Suite will automagically change into Secure Productive Enterprise on 1st October 2016.

SPE will be available in two flavours – E3 and E5 – and ECS becomes SPE E3. However, it also gets some new rights including the ability to install the server software for Exchange, Skype for Business and SharePoint on on-premises servers for SPE users (useful if you need to deploy further servers on your way to the cloud) and the From SA USLs also include the rights to install Office Professional Plus on one device.

The official Microsoft page is here: http://bit.ly/2cIWgkh.

Yammer Enterprise standalone plan retirement

Microsoft announce that the Yammer Enterprise standalone plan will retire in Volume Licensing programs on 1 January 2017 and in partner channels on 1 July 2017.

The reason? Most people use Yammer as part of a wider Office 365 plan and that’s how it will be available going forward.

There’s a useful page from Microsoft which explains how this change affects the different VL programs, and what you need to do, when.

Find this page here: http://bit.ly/2cBFncJ.

Microsoft MyAnalytics

Name change alert! Delve Analytics is now known as Microsoft MyAnalytics.

According to Microsoft it’s everything you loved in Delve Analytics with additional capabilities that will allow you to stay up-to-date with important contacts, share key metrics with a coach, and help you prioritise the time you spend with different groups.

Read all about it, watch a few videos, and find an FAQ here: http://bit.ly/2d7giFy.

Office 365 Update Channels

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.