Evaluating service offerings
The previous Office 365 offering focused heavily on business clients in two subscription types:
Small Business Plan (Plan P1) and two Midsize Business and Enterprise plans (Plan E1 and Plan E3). These types provided varying functionality, but focused on four core service offerings, all of which were cloud-based:
■■ Microsoft Exchange Online
■■ SharePoint Online
■■ Lync Online
■■ Microsoft Office Professional Plus
There are a total of four subscription types in this newest Office 365 platform. Small Business Premium and Enterprise continue to support business users; Home Premium and ProPlus extend the Office client in the cloud to the home and businesses that want to simply deploy Office without Exchange, SharePoint, and so on.
IMPORTANT SHAREPOINT IN OFFICE 365 SUBSCRIPTIONS
Neither Office 365 Home Premium nor Office 365 ProPlus includes any type of SharePoint offering in their subscription types. As in the previous Office 365, SharePoint is included within the Small Business and Enterprise subscription types and includes services that vary on the type of plan chosen.
SharePoint plans and subscription levels
Before discussing the major subscription types, it should be stated that there are individual plan levels that apply to the online components (SharePoint, Exchange, and Lync) within each subscription.
Although the combinations of plans, subscriptions, and levels can seem to be confusing (and occasionally overwhelming), the resulting customizability of each enables an organization to truly tailor the type of online environment that is required.
There are two plan levels that specifically apply to a SharePoint Online environment: Plan
1 and Plan 2. Additionally, Enterprise external users are also discussed as Enterprise levels (E1– E4 levels of SharePoint Online) allow for external collaboration with users not located within your organization.
MORE INFO PLANS, SUBSCRIPTIONS, AND LEVELS
A very thorough listing of each component’s availability within each level of the SharePoint Online offering can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj819267.aspx.
Office 365 home Premium
The Home Premium subscription focuses on the availability of client services to users, providing access to Office 2013, SkyDrive, and Skype Services; it does not include Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online, Project Online, or Visio Online services.
This subscription includes the following:
■■ The ability to install Office on up to five PCs, Macs, or tablets, shared among all users in the home
■■ Core Office applications: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote
■■ E-mail, publishing, and database applications: Microsoft Outlook, Publisher, and Access
■■ Office on Demand: Streaming versions of Office applications, requiring Windows 7 or 8 and an Internet connection
■■ Skype services, offering 60 minutes of free calling to 40-plus countries worldwide
■■ An additional 20 GB of SkyDrive online storage
Office 365 ProPlus
The ProPlus subscription focuses purely on the Microsoft Office client suite, omitting webbased services such as SharePoint, Exchange, and so on; if desired, these services can be purchased separately.
One of the more interesting components of this subscription is called Click-to-Run. Using this type of installation (instead of a traditional Windows Installer-based [*.msi]), users can begin using a program before it is completely downloaded.
This subscription includes the following:
■■ The ability to install Office on up to five PCs, Macs, or tablets per licensed user
■■ Core Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote
■■ E-mail, publishing and database applications: Outlook, Publisher, and Access
■■ Unified communications and forms: Lync and InfoPath
■■ Office on Demand: Streaming versions of Office applications, requiring Windows 7 or 8 and an Internet connection
■■ Access to Enterprise features via Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS):
■■ Single sign-on/identity federation
■■ Active Directory synchronization
■■ Domains
Office 365 Small Business Premium
Office Small Business Premium is the least-expensive subscription that offers SharePoint Online and is designed for small businesses with up to 10 employees. This subscription does not include either the Skype services or the additional SkyDrive storage granted by the Home Premium subscription, but does include the following:
■■ The ability to install Office on up to five PCs, Macs, or tablets per licensed user
■■ Core Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote
■■ E-mail, publishing and database applications: Outlook, Publisher, and Access
■■ Unified communications and forms: Lync and InfoPath
■■ Office on Demand: Streaming versions of Office applications, requiring Windows 7 or 8 and an Internet connection
■■ A 25 GB Outlook mailbox, shared calendar, contact manager, scheduling, and task-list tools; and 10 GB of cloud-based storage (plus 500 MB per licensed user)
■■ The ability to set up, build, and maintain a public-facing web site with no additional hosting fees (SharePoint)
■■ Access to Lync Online (Plan 1)
■■ Access to SharePoint Online (Plan 1)
■■ Access to Exchange Online (Plan 1)
Office 365 enterprise
The Enterprise subscription level of Office 365 is the top of the line, basically including the entire Office stack, both online and offline. This product provides functionality normally associated with on-premise installations, including information rights management, federation, and enterprise records management.
This subscription includes the following:
■■ The ability to install Office on up to five PCs, Macs, or tablets per licensed user
■■ Core Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote
■■ E-mail, publishing and database applications: Outlook, Publisher, and Access
■■ Unified communications and forms: Lync and InfoPath
■■ Office on Demand: Streaming versions of Office applications, requiring Windows 7 or 8 and an Internet connection
■■ A 25 GB Outlook mailbox, shared calendar, contact manager, scheduling and task-list tools, and 10 GB of cloud-based storage (plus 500 MB per licensed user)
■■ The ability to set up, build, and maintain a public-facing web site with no additional hosting fees (SharePoint)
■■ Access to Lync Online (Plan 2)
■■ Access to Exchange Online (Plan 2)
■■ Data loss prevention that is compliant with regulatory standards ■■ Access to SharePoint Online (Plan 2), including the following:
■■ Site mailboxes to enhance collaboration
■■ Archiving, eDiscovery venter to identify, hold, and analyze information from Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync
EXAM TIP
although it might seem trivial at first, knowing which functionality is available at each subscription level is a critical component of your Office 365 design and planning effort.
