Microsoft have announced changes to their Office 365 plans for small and midsize businesses which are expected to become effective in October 2014. As well as simplifying choices for customers, functionality is improved and for customer who would have previously used the midsize business plan, there is a cost saving as well. So it all seems like good news!

So what are the new packages?

Here is the Pro Drive summary:

Office 365 Business

The is the SME version of the Office 365 Pro Plus package – giving you the office applications we all know and love plus 1TB of cloud storage through the OneDrive for Business app. As with all Office 365 plans providing the office applications, you will have the option of installing 5 copies of office per user on any device.

Office 365 Business Essentials

This is a halfway house between the old Office 365 Small Business plan and the Office 365 Enterprise E1 plan. Essentially it is ideal for any SME that requires the Office 365 hosted services – such as Lync, SharePoint and Email Online but already has Microsoft Office licensing in place. For companies who are moving to hosted email from an on premise system, this represents an opportunity to gain the other Office 365 services at little additional cost.

Office 365 Business Premium

This is a combination of the Business and Business Essential plans and effectively replaces the Small Business Premium and Midsize Business plans.

So what does this mean for customers? Well it is certainly more choice for less cost. But Pro Drive see it as an opportunity for business to really embrace the opportunity that Office 365 offers to improve their productivity and improve the service to their customers.

Please contact us on 0330 124 3599 if you want to know more!