Microsoft announced that Office 365 will be changed to Microsoft 365.
This information could be quite confusing, but you should not worry much about it ?
Why Office 365 changes to Microsoft 365
Microsoft announced that on 21 April 2020 same Office 365 licenses will be renamed to Microsoft 365. In details of the shared note, you can see that all licenses for small and middle business will be re-branded to Microsoft 365. Why are such changes happening?
The main reason behind the change is to target Office 365 better way to the small and middle businesses where Office is strongly recognized as a Word, Excel and PowerPoint Suite. Personally I heard many times from business users that there is no clear difference between Microsoft Client applications and cloud-based Microsoft services.
The second reason behind the changes is the growth of the platform. More apps, products and services are included as part of Office 365/Microsoft 365. We get to the point where the Office 365 name is too narrow to describe all additional benefits behind the service.
Because of that subscriptions will be renamed to Microsoft 365.
What is really changing with the new Microsoft 365 product name
From your perspective two key elements changes in work with Microsoft cloud solutions.
Subscription names:
- Office 365 Business Essentials changes to Microsoft 365 Business Basic.
- Office 365 Business Premium changes to Microsoft 365 Business Standard.
- Microsoft 365 Business changes to Microsoft 365 Business Premium.
- Office 365 Business and Office 365 ProPlus changes to Microsoft 365 Apps.
Rebranding of the product
You can notice that in the official communication, navigation and more and more places Microsoft 365 replacing Office 365 product name. You can already see on Microsoft.com sites that Office 365 name is replaced with Microsoft 365. I expect that the Office 365 name will be removed from the use.
How rebranding of Office 365 to Microsoft 365 will affect me
You should not worry much about this change. It will not have much impact on your daily tasks.
Two places where you need to prepare yourself:
- purchase of new Microsoft 365 licenses
- general communication about the platform itself
We need to used to new naming of the Microsoft 365 platform, renamed subscriptions and change a little the way how we communicate about Office 365. We can also assume this is not the last change in this area ?
