Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents

There are updated (July 2024) Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents with some small changes such as the addition of the Microsoft Entra Suite.

These useful documents tell you which (of the many) different components are included in which Office 365/Microsoft 365 plan, and there’s a table for SMB customers (https://bit.ly/4crTOde), and one for Enterprise customers (https://bit.ly/4cKyLlQ), and still more for specialist US customers – one for GCC (https://bit.ly/4eQCYq4), one for GCC High (https://bit.ly/3VTxtho) and the final one for DoD (https://bit.ly/3UrMlD7).

And, if you’re a partner, there’s exciting news – we’ve found the Excel version of these files! Drop us an email on info@licensingschool.co.uk from your work email address and we’ll send it on.

Microsoft Sentinel

Microsoft announce that Microsoft Sentinel is now generally available in the Microsoft Defender portal as part of the unified security operations platform.

The announcement article here: https://bit.ly/3WvzCli gives a good overview of what Microsoft Sentinel customers on the commercial cloud with at least one Microsoft Defender XDR workload deployed will now be able to do. Microsoft Sentinel itself analyses large amounts of data to accelerate threat detection and responses across an organisation, and is billed by the volume of data stored in a Log Analytics workspace and analysed in Microsoft Sentinel.

Find the pricing page here: https://bit.ly/3Y9DrO7.

Microsoft Entra Suite

Microsoft announce that the Microsoft Entra Suite is generally available. This solution brings together identity and network access so that you can secure employee access to any cloud or on-premises application or resource from any location whilst all the time enforcing least privileged access. Microsoft Entra Suite costs $12 per user per month and can be assigned to any user already licensed with Entra ID Plan 1 – or any plan (like Microsoft 365 E3) that includes it. There’s also an Add-on available for users already licensed with Entra ID Plan 2.

Find the announcement here (with a list of the suite components): https://bit.ly/4fa2iY1, pricing information here: https://bit.ly/46dHcUU, and the Product Terms information here: https://bit.ly/2OFt7vB.

Dynamics 365 Business Central On-premises Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (May 2024) Dynamics 365 Business Central On-premises Licensing Guide with just a minor change: a couple of additional tables added to the Team Members Included Tables list on pages 14/15.

Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/4cxeXTh.

Power Platform Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (July 2024) Power Platform Licensing Guide with just a couple of changes. Firstly, there’s a new tier of Dataverse Database capacity Add-on which is available in increments of 1 GB and has a minimum purchase requirement of 1,000 units. Secondly, Dynamics 365 Professional and Teams Members licences may now be used with Managed Environments, rather than just the Enterprise licences.

Grab this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/3VO3BDj.

Viva feature comparison table

There’s an updated (June 2024) Viva feature comparison table which has a footnote added confirming that licences are required for users receiving communications through Viva Amplify or creating campaigns.

Get this updated document here: https://bit.ly/4cMudvj.

External users

Microsoft announce that from October 1, 2024 there will be a change to the definition of an external user which will now state that a contractor or agent typically doesn’t work onsite for the customer every working day, or for more than 30 hours on average per week.

The glossary in the Product Terms will be updated in October, but you can find the announcement and the affected products here in the meantime: https://bit.ly/3Lgi2v2.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (July 2024) Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide. There’s been some reworking of the initial sections, and the order of the products is now (more or less) alphabetical. There’s a newly-formatted Base and Attach licences table on page 4 which now includes prices, and the brand-new Customer Service Premium and Dynamics 365 Contact Center licences are added throughout.

See our blog for details of those new licences: https://bit.ly/4cNzi6m, and grab this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/3L69PJA.

Dynamics 365 Contact Center

Microsoft add Dynamics 365 Contact Center to the July 2024 Product Terms.

It’s a new product that adapts the capabilities of the previous Voice and Digital Messaging channel Add-ons for Dynamics 365 Customer Service and makes them available in a standalone product. Infused (of course) with Copilot and using Generative AI, it’s designed as a Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution, and there’s a nice video to give you an idea of what that might look like here: https://youtu.be/UeKSBD7i3RI.

From a licensing perspective, you can buy a standalone solution costing $110 per user per month, or you can buy it with Customer Service Enterprise in a new offering called Customer Service Premium, which costs $195 per user per month.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3XNMeFh, and pricing information here: https://bit.ly/45N2kB4.

End of life for Microsoft Publisher

Microsoft announce that when Publisher 2021 reaches end of support on October 13, 2026, it will no longer be included in Microsoft 365, and existing on-premises suites will no longer be supported.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/4cp7upa.