The Home Use Program is renamed to the Workplace Discount Program, but there are no changes to the offers that are available to eligible organisations.
You can find out more about the Workplace Discount Program here: https://bit.ly/3Qb7AFx, and notice of the name change on the Product Terms site here: https://bit.ly/3prduoo.
Microsoft’s Home Use Program enters its next phase as Office Professional Plus HUP licences are removed from the July 2019 Product Terms.
You can still buy HUP licences for Project and Visio, but licences for the Office products to use at home are now covered by Office 365 Home or Personal subscriptions.
If you want a reminder of the new Home Use Program then our previous blog articles are useful – Office 365 Home Use Program Benefit (http://bit.ly/2yj0Qj1) and Home Use Program FAQ: http://bit.ly/2SLj2LJ.
There’s a new guide on the Home Use Program, aimed at those people who manage HUP benefits within a business. These days the benefits are managed through the Microsoft Store for Business, and the guide takes administrators through the steps needed to get set up for this, including using the Azure AD authentication and identity service. There are also instructions for inviting employees to use the Home Use Program, an overview of what employees will need to do on receiving the invitation, and a summary FAQ.
Find this guide in the Volume Licensing Guides section at http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.
There’s an updated FAQ on the Home Use Program with two main items of interest.
Firstly, the number of qualifying Office 365/Microsoft 365 licences that education or non-profit customers need is reduced to 2,000 to match the requirements for commercial or government customers.
Secondly, there are instructions added for IT administrators to manage the HUP benefit through the Microsoft Store for Business.
Find the FAQ here: http://bit.ly/2Y45JrL.
The new Office 365 Home Use Program benefit is added to the February 2019 Product Terms. If a customer has SAM coverage on the Applications pool then employees may buy an Office 365 Home or Personal subscription through the Microsoft Home Use Program website at a discounted rate.
What’s interesting (and different to its Office 2019 HUP counterpart) is that employees may renew the subscription at the special HUP price regardless of whether they’re still employed by the qualifying organisation and that organisation’s SAM coverage status.
Find these details on page 80 and get the February 2019 Product Terms here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.
Microsoft’s December 2018 Licensing News article has three topics of interest covering Microsoft 365 licensing updates. Firstly, EA and MPSA customers can now take advantage of a single SKU for Microsoft 365 which means that they see a single item in their Admin Centers and License Summaries, rather than seeing Office 365, Windows and EMS as separate components.
Secondly, there’s details of Microsoft’s new Home Use Program offer. Historically, HUP has been a Software Assurance benefit where users of devices licensed with Office + SA could purchase Office for their home PCs at a heavily discounted price. That benefit still exists for Office 2019 but the article reveals that this will come to an end on 30 June, 2019.
The new HUP offer allows individuals to purchase Office 365 Home or Office 365 Personal annual subscriptions at a 30% discount. This is available to customers who have Office with Software Assurance but is also available to customers who qualify with a certain number of Office 365/Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 licences: 2,000 for commercial organisations, and 13,000 for education or charity institutions.
Now, this isn’t available worldwide yet and although you can see it’s live in most countries (see the UK site here, for example http://bit.ly/2B6guQG), the article states that China and Japan will have this benefit on 1 April, 2019, and if you check out the US site (http://bit.ly/2sOPW1Q) there’s a message telling you that the US launch will be in early 2019.
And finally, there’s an update on the dual use rights available when a customer has a Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 From SA licence. Currently there are special rights detailed in the Product Terms which allow customers to install “traditional” Office Professional Plus as well as Office 365 ProPlus. The article states that these rights will be removed from 1 August, 2019 so customers renewing agreements after that date will no longer be entitled to the special installation rights.
Find the December 2018 Licensing News article here: http://bit.ly/2R3bV2u.
The Home Use Program is available to those customers who have active Software Assurance on their Office suite or applications licences, and it enables users of licensed devices to buy Office products at a heavily discounted price for home use. Office 2019 is now available through this program with a choice of Office Professional Plus 2019, Office Home and Business 2019, Visio Professional 2019 and Project Professional 2019.
They are all priced at $14.99, an increase from $9.99, and you can find out about the HUP program and order the products here: http://bit.ly/2Dd65VN.
The Home Use Program marketing site is updated for Office 2016. This is where you’ll find presentations to learn about HUP whether you’re a user, executive or Benefits Administrator, and also where you can download marketing materials such as flyers, newsletters and web banners to help you promote HUP in your organisation.
Find this useful site here – http://bit.ly/1WgyuZi – and choose your language and country at the right hand side.
There’s a slight change to the Home Use Program rights: previously the wording stipulated that the software could be installed on one home computer and one portable device, now it’s on up to two devices which can be either 2 PCs or 2 Macs, dependent on what’s been purchased.
See page 69 of the November 2014 Product List.