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.