Tag Archives: Office 365

Multi-Geo Capabilities in Office 365

Microsoft change the minimum requirements for the Multi-Geo capabilities in Office 365 from 2,500 Office 365 licences to 500. What is Multi-Geo? Essentially it allows a single Office 365 tenant to span across multiple Office 365 data centre geographies and gives customers the ability to store their Exchange and OneDrive data, at-rest, on a per-user basis, in their chosen geographies. You can imagine this helps some organisations to meet their data residency requirements.

Find out more about Multi-Geo here: http://bit.ly/2EOBkWx and see page 61 of the June 2019 Product Terms for an overview of the licensing requirements. Find the Product Terms document here: http://bit.ly/MSproductterms.

Home Use Program FAQ

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.

Office 365 ProPlus Licensing Articles

If you’ve got an interest in deploying Office 365 ProPlus in an enterprise environment then the list of articles here (http://bit.ly/2GaurkA) is worth a look.

Of particular usefulness to those focusing on licensing is an “Overview of Shared Computer Activation for Office 365 ProPlus” (http://bit.ly/2t4biIn) and an “Overview of Licensing and Activation in Office 365 ProPlus” (http://bit.ly/2MLhSwy).

One for your weekend reading list!

Office 365 Home Use Program Benefit

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.

Office 365 for Mac available in the Mac App store

Microsoft announce that Office 365 for Mac is now available on the Mac App store, where users with an Office 365 subscription that includes the Office apps will be able to install the Mac versions of the Office products with a single click.

Find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/2RAfNV6 Apple also make the announcement (https://apple.co/2WhsCY4) highlighting the further benefit that businesses will now be able to use the Apple Business Manager to easily distribute the apps to employees.

Office Connectivity Support for Office 365 Services

Microsoft announce that Office 2016 will continue to be able to connect to Office 365 services through October 2023. The previous support policy mandated that after 13 October, 2020 customers would be required to have either Office 365 ProPlus or Office 2019 to connect to these services. Find the announcement towards the bottom of this page: http://bit.ly/2N3kqty.

Support for Office 365 ProPlus on Windows

Microsoft announce some extensions to the support for Office 365 ProPlus on various versions of Windows:

  • Office 365 ProPlus will be supported on Windows 8.1 through January 2023, which is the end of support date for Windows 8.1
  • Office 365 ProPlus will be supported on Windows 7 through January 2023 if the customer has purchased Windows 7 Enterprise Security Updates (see our blog post: http://bit.ly/2N1uwuM)
  • Office 365 ProPlus will be supported on Windows Server 2016 until October 2025

Find the announcement towards the bottom of this page: http://bit.ly/2N3kqty.

Office 365 Home and Personal Subscriptions

Microsoft announce changes to the rights for Office 365 Home and Personal subscriptions. From 2nd October 2018, subscribers to either plan can install Office on an unlimited number of devices and be signed into their accounts on up to five of those devices at the same time. Previous rights were 10 devices for Home, and one PC/Mac and one tablet for Personal subscribers. There’s also an increase of the number of users associated with a Home subscription from five to six. Find the Microsoft announcement here: http://bit.ly/2wzWX8d.

Office 365 ProPlus Update Channels

The new names for the Office 365 ProPlus update channels are live – with another slight change. From September 2017 these are the final names:

  • The “Current Channel” becomes the “Monthly Channel” with monthly feature updates
  • The “First Release for Deferred Channel” becomes the “Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted)” with feature updates in March and September and each release supported for 18 months
  • The “Deferred Channel” becomes the “Semi-Annual Channel” with feature updates twice a year, 4 months after the Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted) release in January and July, and each release supported for 14 months

There’s a useful blog post here: http://bit.ly/2qYqGD6 where you’ll also find recommended next steps and exact dates for the upcoming schedule of Office ProPlus releases.