At the end of last month, Microsoft announced that it would be rebranding some of its Office 365 plans to instead be called Microsoft 365.
The announcement was made on March 30, 2020, at the same time as the international IT giant unveiled its newly rebranded customer subscription bundles.
While the name change will not affect any features or pricing, the change on April 21 will happen automatically, so don’t be concerned if you see it – it’s literally just a name change.
Which Microsoft Office products are affected?
The new product names will mostly affect small to medium business users of the products and apply to the following:
- Office 365 Business Essentials (Web Only Access) will become Microsoft 365 Business Basic.
- Office 365 Business Premium (Essentials Plus Desktop Applications – Word, Outlook, Excel, etc.) will become Microsoft 365 Business Standard.
- Microsoft 365 Business (Premium Plus Advanced Security and Device Management) will become Microsoft 365 Business Premium.
In reiterating that this was simply a name change for now, Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365 said: “These changes represent our ambition to continue to drive innovation in Microsoft 365 that goes well beyond what customers traditionally think of as Office.
“The Office you know and love will still be there, but we’re excited about the new apps and services we’ve added to our subscriptions over the last few years and about the new innovations we’ll be adding in the coming months”.
Get the cloud services that are right for you
The idea is that small to medium businesses using the Microsoft products will more quickly be able to find the plan that’s right for them as the products are increasingly getting artificial intelligence capabilities and developing over time. All newly named plans became available for customers on April 21, 2020.
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