Microsoft announce the end of support for Office Online Server, effective December 31, 2026. The software, which lets an organisation use browser-based Office applications from an on-premises server host, won’t receive any more security updates, bug fixes, or technical support from this date. The recommended alternative is, of course, Microsoft 365, for its collaboration, security, and integration with other Microsoft services.
Read the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3JTnTJK.
Microsoft introduce Microsoft 365 Business Premium for GCC-High. This offering, aimed at suppliers to US government organisations, provides robust security and compliance features for up to 500 (not 300!) users. It helps meet complex compliance requirements like the CMMC, providing essential enterprise-grade capabilities for smaller organisations in regulated environments.
Find out more here: https://bit.ly/4r4Y6is.
Microsoft announce that the Finance Solution in Microsoft 365 Copilot is now generally available. You might have heard of it by a different name since it’s a product that’s already undergone a series of name changes – Copilot for Finance and Finance Agents to name a couple. Now it’s essentially a set of Agents designed to automate various financial tasks across apps like Excel and Outlook, connecting to ERP systems such as Dynamics 365 and SAP. From a licensing perspective, you need to be licensed for Microsoft 365 Copilot and the relevant ERP system.
Find the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/43o2r66.
The Modern Work Plan Comparison documents for November 2025 have been released. These documents now fully reflect the updated names for the Defender and Purview Add-ons and show the reintroduced Office and Microsoft 365 licenses with Teams included. In the SMB comparison, a new footnote confirms a maximum of 300 User SLs across all Business plans combined. Separate PDF files are available for the Enterprise, SMB, US Government, and Education sectors which you can find here: https://bit.ly/4hn2hS2. If you’re a partner, an Excel version of these files is also available.
If you’d like a copy, drop us an email from your work email address to info@licensingschool.co.uk, and we’ll send it on.
There’s an updated (May 2025) Microsoft 365 – Unattended License Overview Licensing Guidance. If you haven’t come across this document before, it’s got some useful information on how you license a bot to run repetitive tasks in a Windows client or Microsoft 365 App without user intervention. The updates are slightly odd – references to Windows 11 are removed in favour of Windows 10, and it’s not yet updated for the “new” Power Automate licences introduced in August 2023. We’ve got a new section in LicenseVerse – Licensing Guides Cautionary Notes – to keep you informed of errors like this in current Microsoft Licensing Guides.
Help yourself to this May 2025 document here: https://bit.ly/4nDXHBb.
The various Copilot offerings have somewhat evolved over time! We have seen Microsoft Copilot become Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, and there are new features being added all the time. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is a collection of AI features, the newest of which is chat functionality within the Microsoft 365 Apps. This means that if you have a valid Microsoft 365 or Office 365 licence, you’ll now find a snazzy sidebar in your apps which is aware of the context of the document you have open, and will provide natural language assistance based on what it sees. No need for a separate Microsoft 365 Copilot licence!
There is more information on the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3DZCgca, along with eligibility criteria here: http://bit.ly/4oycQEb.
Microsoft announce Microsoft 365 Premium, a new offering exclusively for consumers. Not to be confused with Microsoft 365 Business Premium, this subscription combines Microsoft 365 Family with Copilot Pro, allowing six users access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, along with 1 TB of cloud storage each. There are also advanced AI features only available to the subscription owner, which include the highest available usage limits and the powerful reasoning agents Researcher and Analyst.
Find the details of the announcement here: http://bit.ly/4n1o2Ii.
Microsoft introduced us to the notion of their Sovereign Private Cloud in June 2025 (see the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3KYvuqj). It’s designed for customers who need to meet strict sovereignty requirements and combines Azure Local and Microsoft 365 Local. Azure Local’s been around a while, but Microsoft 365 Local is new. It’s built on the Azure Local infrastructure, and enables organisations to deploy the traditional Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Skype for Business Server products entirely within their sovereign environment. To that end, the new SE versions of these products will be supported until at least 31 December, 2035.
Find information on Microsoft 365 Local here: https://bit.ly/3Wosztx, and the earliest End of Support date information here: https://bit.ly/48QNrRC.
Microsoft rebrand the security and compliance suite Add-ons for Microsoft 365 Enterprise plans from 1 October, 2025. This aligns the names with the recently introduced SMB security and compliance suites which you can read more about on our blog here: https://bit.ly/3IsVjhH. The functionality remains the same, with Microsoft 365 E5 Security now becoming the Microsoft Defender Suite, and Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance becoming the Microsoft Purview Suite.
Find out the details here: https://bit.ly/46R1KTE.
Microsoft announce that the inclusion of Teams will once more be an option for Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suite customers. From 1 November, 2025 Office 365 E1/E3/E5 and Microsoft 365 E3/E5 will be available both with and without Teams, alongside the Frontline Worker and Business suites which continue to be available with or without Teams.
Find the details in the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/3WccCXc, along with information about other changes made in response to European competition concerns.