 What is changing? |
| On August 1, 2024, Microsoft will retire the Office 365 A1 Plus program, a free Office subscription that includes Office desktop apps for qualified schools that purchased Office institution-wide for faculty and staff. This program was introduced in 2015 to ease the provisioning burden for IT of moving users to the cloud. While the intent was to help schools with their transition, it also introduced a level of complexity leading to compliance issues for our customers, with many inadvertently becoming non-compliant. Today, Microsoft 365 A3 and A5 licenses are easier to provision, both addressing our customer requirements and the need for a transitional program. All existing Office 365 A1 Plus licenses will expire as of August 1, 2024. Microsoft is introducing changes to our storage offerings across our Microsoft 365 for Education suite. Beginning at your next contract renewal, but no sooner than August 1, 2024, all school tenants will receive 100TB of free pooled storage across OneDrive, SharePoint, and Exchange, with an additional 50GB-100GB of pooled storage per paid user for A3 and A5 subscriptions, respectively (not including student use benefits)*. In addition, effective February 1, 2024, users of Office 365 A1 (free subscription) will be limited to a maximum of 100GB for OneDrive storage, within the 100TB of pooled storage for the school tenant. Schools will have the option to purchase incremental storage based on your needs. Some of the benefits we expect to see include helping schools reduce some of the security risks associated with legacy storage and data sprawl, a top concern for most chief risk officers, while also benefiting our shared environmental footprint. *For details on how this will be implemented and next steps, please view our FAQ. |
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| With the move to the cloud, stored files, data and unused accounts have increased significantly over time, as more and more stored files and data have proliferated without a plan for end-of-life. This is not sustainable from a cost perspective, and it puts education institutions and their students at risk for a data breach. Today, education is the most affected industry by cybercrime, with K12 receiving over 80% of workplace malware attacks alone.In addition, stored files no longer in use have an impact on our carbon footprint with over half of all data stored by organizations not serving a useful purpose. Storage of this “dark” data takes up space on servers and results in increased electricity consumption, generating 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 alone. 1 Microsoft is committed to both the security and privacy of school and student data as well as reducing our collective carbon footprint. Already, our datacenters are built with the highest environmental standards in mind. With this change, education customers can help do their part. (World Economic Forum1)Finally, Microsoft’s mission in education is to empower students, faculty and schools to achieve more. To achieve this mission, Microsoft continues to innovate on new technology, tools and services for educators, such as the new learning accelerators introduced earlier this year to help students with reading and other essential skills. Today, Microsoft provides Office 365 and Microsoft 365 for Education suites built for education through free software grants or at significant discounts off commercial pricing. With these new updates we can continue to invest in meaningful innovation while offering those services to more institutions around the world. |
| What does this mean for schools?To help schools with this transition, Microsoft is delivering a set of free tools to help manage the process end-to-end including tools to visualize current storage allocation and usage across OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange, and tools to more easily manage stored data and end-of-life stored files that are no longer needed. Today, most schools (99.96%) are well below their storage allotment. With new tools, all schools can now better manage their information and set thoughtful policies for governance. To see your school’s current storage profile and access the new storage management tools, go to the M365 Admin Center. For storage guidance download the Microsoft 365 Storage Guidance ebook. |
| Institutions using Office 365 A1 Plus today have the following options: Customers will continue to have the option to leverage our Office 365 A1 offer, a free subscription with access to online Office 365 apps, collaboration, and classroom tools.Customers who license Microsoft 365 A3 or A5 for faculty today can use their student use benefits to deploy Microsoft 365 A3 or A5 for students at a 40:1 student to faculty ratio.Customers can purchase additional Microsoft 365 A3 or A5 licenses for faculty or staff currently not covered under another license.For customers who have additional light users or want to use desktop apps, there is an option to purchase the Office desktop apps add-on or Office 365 A3 licenses. |
| If you’re interested in deploying Microsoft 365 A3 or A5 licenses at your school, visit our website.For more information on what’s included in Microsoft 365 A1, A3, and A5 licenses, read our M365 education infographic. |
| We understand that this requires a transition plan for your institution, and we want to help you through that transition.I would like to discuss your current situation, licensing options and what services would be best for your institution at your convenience, as well as answer any questions you may have. Please let me know what date works best for you. |
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