In the past month Microsoft announced changes to their licensing model for education. Also known as the EES license (Enrollment for Education Solutions), the changes come under the same name but have a completely different focus.  The changes will enable you to get more out of Office 365 and other products and services in the cloud.  If anything, you are getting more from your licensing and better security.

Cloud First Licensing

When Satya Nadella was appointed Microsoft CEO he set out a new vision for the organisation which has seen the business grow and change under his leadership.  “Mobile First, Cloud First “.  Even though Microsoft are now publically focusing on AI (artifical intelligence) this moto is true to any business and should help to focus change within business in delivering better services to their employees, customers, teachers and learners.

Office 365 has changed over recent years to include more education features such as Microsoft Teams Edu, OneNote Class Notebook and Learning Tools but there have been lots of other changes to the platform for security, Cloud Telephony, Minecraft for Education, the list continues but these have all been available to us but at an extra cost on top of our EES agreement.

The new EES agreement is a cloud first based licensing enabling you to get more out of some of those paid for solutions at a very similar price to what you are paying now.

With Office 365 Education licensing you don’t have to purchase anything from Microsoft (including EES) to get this free license which has now been renamed to Office 365 A1 and if you do purchase EES you can get the Office 365 A1 Plus added, adding the Office 365 Pro Plus client for your users to use.   As part of your EES (2015) license you would get your server licenses, productivity suite server licenses and also your client access licenses with that single benefit to the cloud (Office 365 A1 Plus).  With the new licensing model (EES 2017) and Microsoft 365 Education, things flip the other way so you get your licenses in the cloud first which then enable you to license products in your own environment.

Additional Solutions from the Cloud

You will now purchase Microsoft 365 Education licenses at either the A3 or A5 depending on the features you want for those users and get additional functionality for that level.  The best of these in my opinion is Minecraft for Education – all students and teachers will get this license, what a great addition to your licensing and Microsoft Cloud Platform.

Other features include (depending on if you buy A3 or A5)

• Azure AD Premium
• Intune Education
• Office 365 Advanced Treat Prevention
• PowerBI Pro
• My Analytics
• Enterprise Mobility Suite
• Office 365 A3/A5
• PSTNConferencing / Cloud Telephony

Note, you still get the ability to install client software on your machines, depending on the licensing provider (we’ll get to this in a future post).

Look out for the changes with your licensing provider and I look forward to sharing more about these features in the future.