Many CSPs are aware of the Shift Campaign Microsoft has going on right now where you can get 15% margin on your first year of Microsoft 365 for net new seats of M365 Buisness or upgrades from a traditional office365 plan such as E3. Microsoft recently added more features to M365 business so you can check off more boxes for security and compliance. Lets take a quick look at a feature comparison between the two plans:
Highlights:
When to Keep E3
- You do not plan on using Intune for MDM and MAM
- You have a user count of over 300 users
- You do not need to upgrade users to Windows 10
- You have RDS deployed with Proplus
When to move to M365 Business
- You want to adopt Intune for your MDM and policy solution (moving away from traditional GPO environment)
- You have less than 300 users
- You have some workstations that need to be upgraded to Windows 10
- You do not have RDS deployed
- You want to adopt the new licensing model where we have OS as a service, Intune for policy management, and Azure AD for identity management
- You want to get 15% or more for the first year of the subscription
Transition Path:
I have outlined the transition steps in the article below. Beyond re-licensing the users, the biggest hurdle is the uninstall/reinstall of the office suite because we are moving from Proplus to OfficeBusinessRetail. The guide i have shows how to get this done using Intune.
Highlights:
-The end user does not know anything is going on.
-It is completely scripted behind the scenes
-You DO NOT need to touch every workstation