Office 365 to Microsoft 365, What's the deal?

whether a fan of Microsoft, its products, business solutions or not, You may have heard that Microsoft will be switching over from office 365 to Microsoft 365 by the 21st of April 2020. well yes of course if you haven't heard, be informed that's what's going to happen. Probably you will be pondering or thinking why what's new or what's going to be the change? why Microsoft 365? and stuffs like that. Well, in a nutshell, Microsoft claims people or businesses are going to achieve more with innovative office apps, Intelligent cloud services, and world-class security. So, If you are not so familiar with business online suits, In this article I will briefly highlight office 365, then move over to Microsoft 365 so you can see the enhanced features, subscription cost and maybe even reasons for the migration or why the name change?. The good news is you get a whole lot of features for the same cost as the old office 365. Isn't that great?

Office 365 Highlights:

Office 365 was first announced by Microsoft in October 2010, beginning with a private beta with various organizations, leading into public beta in April 2011, and reaching general availability on June 28, 2011. The idea was for Office 365 platform to "bring together" its existing online services such as the business productivity online suite into "an always-up-to-date cloud service" incorporating exchange server for e-mail, SharePoint for internal social networking, collaboration, and a public web site, and Lync which is now called Skype for Business used for communication, Voice over Internet Protocol(VOIP) and conferencing. Its originally aimed at corporate users, as a successor to Microsoft Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). With the release of Microsoft office 2013. Microsoft expanded Office 365 to include new plans aimed at different types of businesses, along with new plans aimed at general consumers, including benefits tailored towards Microsoft consumer services such as OneDrive whose integration with Office was a major feature of the 2013 suite. Office 365 is a cloud-based suite of productivity apps and services. It consists of core apps and services including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote and Outlook. And offers the opportunity to add in Skype, Teams, OneDrive, Planner, Yammer, Exchange, Publisher and Access.

Office 365 is Microsoft's flagship productivity software. For a monthly fee, you gain access to several things such as the classic Microsoft applications. It may interest you to know that Office 365 subscriptions come with over 20 apps which are grouped in nine categories as follows

Office Applications: Word, Publisher, OneNote, PowerPoint, and Access.

Enterprise and Team Collaboration: Yammer, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Skype for business

Business Application Platform: Microsoft Flow, Power Apps, Microsoft Forms

Task and Project Management: To-do, Project online, Task, Planner

Analytics: Power BI, My analytics

Video Presentations: Microsoft sway, Stream, Video

Email and Calendaring: Microsoft Exchange, Outlook, Calendar

File storage: Search and Employees: OneDrive, Delve, People

Small Businesses: Staffhub, Bookings, Visio Online

Microsoft 365:

Microsoft 365 is designed to help individuals achieve more with innovative Office apps, intelligent cloud services, and world-class security. So on March 30, 2020, Microsoft unveiled a consumer-oriented subscription product under the Microsoft 365 brand for release on April 21, which will succeed the existing consumer tiers of Office 365. It is a super-set of the existing Office 365 products with benefits positioned towards "life", productivity, and families, including the Microsoft Office suite, it comes with 1 TB of additional OneDrive storage and access to OneDrive Personal Vault, and 60 minutes of Skype calls per month. Microsoft will also add access to its collaboration platform Teams which will also add additional features designed around family use and a premium tier of Microsoft family safety. plans are announced to offer trial offers of third-party services for Microsoft 365 subscribers, with companies such as Adobe creative cloud Photography having partnered. The services will be sold in "Personal" and "Home" (up to six devices by up to six users) versions, at the same price as their Office 365 counterparts.

There are 3 main plans available for Microsoft 365 which includes

1) Microsoft 365 for home plans 

• Microsoft 365 Family
• Microsoft 365 Personal

2) Microsoft 365 for business plans

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic
• Microsoft 365 Business Standard
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium
• Microsoft 365 Apps for business

3) Microsoft 365 for enterprise plans

• Microsoft 365 E3
• Microsoft 365 E5
• Microsoft 365 F1
• Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise

I will also love to comment a bit about Microsoft office 365 Education: Which Empowers educators to unlock creativity, promote teamwork, and provide a simple and safe experience in a single, affordable solution built for education. Microsoft 365 is an all-in-one bundle of three distinct services, including Office 365,Windows 10 Pro, and Enterprise Mobility + Security(EMS). Users also have access to features such as data protection controls, calendaring, email, mobile device management, file storage, data & app security, identity management and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. An Administration can Include students at no extra cost when they buy for educators, faculty, and staff. Microsoft 365 Education gives teachers what they need most therefore Schools adopting Microsoft 365 see a measurable impact on classroom efficiency.

Like office 365, They both officer technically the same productivity enhancements, flexibility security, and Robustness just that Microsoft 365 takes it a bit higher by offering more features, security, and plan. Keep in mind Microsoft 365 includes everything you know in Office 365. Microsoft 365 is designed to help people and businesses achieve more with innovative Office apps, intelligent cloud services, and world-class security. The good news is the pricing scheme or subscription costs are still the same, Many Office 365 subscriptions automatically become Microsoft 365 subscriptions. No action is needed from your end and Note that if you are an existing Office 365 subscriber, you do not have to reinstall or purchase another subscription, but of course, you need internet access to install and activate Microsoft 365 and get all the latest releases of apps and services.

Now the big question why the change of name from office 365 to Microsoft 365? well, Microsoft did that for the name to be more reflective of the range of features and benefits in the subscription to meet the unique needs of individuals and businesses.

To learn about the different pricing plans and benefits, click any of the following links that best appeals to your need  Microsoft home plans, M365 business Plans, M365 Enterprise plans