Going from Microsoft 365 Business basic to Microsoft 365 Business standard is an extra $7.50/month (U.S.), so that’s a nice opportunity to grow highly profitable revenue.
Some of the folks with the lower-cost license might then decide to upgrade to gain access to the new features. The same service plan is used for both SKUs, and apart from Live Events (which are probably not all that interesting for small companies), no differentiation exists in the Teams features available to enterprise users than to those with the Microsoft 365 Business Basic license, which also includes Teams.īy introducing the Teams Pro service plan, Microsoft can restrict access to new features to people with enterprise and Microsoft 365 Business standard and premium licenses. For example, the Office 365 E3 and Office 365 SKUs both include a Microsoft Teams service plan. What I think is happening is that Microsoft wants to create some flexibility in how it controls different features within Teams. Microsoft will use the Teams Pro service plan to control access to “ forthcoming Teams capabilities.” They have not specified what those new features are.Each service plan controls access to capabilities. A product like Office 365 E5 has a SKU to make it available to customers and is composed of multiple service plans, like SharePoint Online or Planner.
You can’t buy a service plan because Microsoft bundles them together to form products. Teams Pro is a service plan rather than a license.MC238782 says that tenants should see Teams Pro added to the licenses in user accounts in mid-March, but I see no sign of it in any account yet. In other words, users with these licenses don’t pay anything extra to get Teams Pro. Microsoft is adding Teams Pro to Microsoft 365 and Office 365 E3/E5/A3/A5 and Microsoft 365 Business standard and Business premium licenses.
My interpretation of the text in the update as follows:
Finally, on April 6, they updated MC238782 to clarify what’s happening. People didn’t know what Teams Pro is, what it would do, and if it would cost any extra.ĭespite having every opportunity to clarify matters at the Ignite 2021 conference in March, Microsoft stayed quiet. In February, Microsoft confused the Office 365 community by issuing message center notification MC238782 to announce a Teams Pro license. It’s All About Feature Differentiation and Control