Forum Discussion
Cian Allner
Jul 15, 2017Silver Contributor
Office 365 Fragmentation?
Another open question is anyone else worried that Office 365 is increasingly being split up, with add-ons and additional costs? This can polarise customers and they either pay up or miss out on usef...
John Wynne
Jul 15, 2017Silver Contributor
Hi Cian, Thanks for bringing this together in a thought piece. I believe this is as important feedback to Microsoft as the purely technical pieces. Licensing is an underserved focus in this Community but the recent changes you highlight bring back the spectre of my days doing fiendishly complex Enterprise Agreement negotiations. I would urge Microsoft to keep licensing as simple as possible the current Enterprise SKUs have achieved this well. I always think of E5 as my 'top' SKU will all products and services available. Workplace Analytics is complementary to My Analytics in many ways and have shared my views directly and through this community that I think the seat limit is a real barrier to adoption. That said, I would expect qualifying organisations to negotiate far below the headline costs through their respective Account Teams. Microsoft's new mantra of Digital Transformation led by Satya Nadella clearly addresses all market segments which clearly jars against this recent trend. My underling feeling, my own opinion only, is that a lot of the additional licensing add-ons are through companies acquired by Microsoft and one wonders if the units are simply in cost recovery mode. If so, I would have thought scale adoption mattered. Like you I'd love to hear others, constructive, insights on this topic.