New Microsoft price increase: reflecting 10 years of development

Can you believe that it’s been a decade since the launch of Office 365?! Since then, Microsoft has introduced a variety of applications and exercised great innovation to improve the Office 365 experience – and with this innovation, a Microsoft price increase will soon take place.  

Since its launch a decade ago, Office 365 has grown to over 300 million commercial paid seats. Along the way, Microsoft has continuously made it its mission to re-invest into the productivity suite, trying to meet the ever-changing needs of their customers.  

Four years ago, Microsoft introduced M365 to bring together the best of Office, Windows, and Enterprise Mobility and Security (EMS). That same year they added our new best friend: Microsoft Teams!  

Today, we’ll be covering the changes that have been made to the commercial pricing for Microsoft 365, along with the innovations delivered over the past decade in communications and collaboration, AI and automation, and the security and compliance areas, reflecting our 3 offering pillars: Hybrid office, Process automation and Secure cloud. 

Hybrid office 

Take a minute to guess how many monthly active users Microsoft Teams has. Go on, we’ll wait. 

250 million! Crazy, right? That’s a little over 3% of the entire world’s population. Teams is an integrated solution where you can chat, call, collaborate, and automate business processes all within the flow of work using Office apps. Since its launch in 2017, new features have been added every year. In 2020 alone, over 300 new capabilities were released to help everyone get what they needed in their new remote work environment. Some fan favourites are together mode, background effects, large gallery view, raise a hand, live reactions, breakout rooms, and live captions.  

• With the rise of the hybrid office, Microsoft has empowered collaboration for many newly remote workers, namely with seamless integrations with the Power Platform, Whiteboard, Lists, Planner, Shifts, Forms and SharePoint.  

• Many companies have also seized this opportunity to build third-party applications that integrate with Teams. These applications bring the familiarity of the product you know right into the platform you use the most at work. For example, such integrations and applications were developed by Cloudspark Technology Labs, Adobe, Atlassian, Salesforce, SAP and ServiceNow. 

Process transformation 

When it comes to achieving more – productivity and collaboration are key. Over the past decade, Microsoft has been implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) applications across their productivity and collaboration applications. Whether you’re writing, designing or presenting, AI-powered innovations can help. AI-powered real-time translation, captions, and transcription make collaboration and communication more accessible and engaging for everyone. Here are some ways cloud-powered AI can be used: 

• Creates maps 
• Creates charts 
• Creates tables in Excel 
• Sorts emails  
• Removes clutter in Outlook 
• Predictive writing 
• Automating processes 

 

 

Secure cloud 

Each year, more and more technological advancements took place, and while this is great for new products and services, it also means there are greater threats present as well. The cybersecurity landscape is more complex than ever. It is crucial that organizations prioritize their security at work, whether it’s compromised by system failures or human errors. Training is now mandatory to withstand the greater volume, sophistication, and scale of modern cyberattacks. Since the launch of Microsoft 365, new surface reduction capabilities have been added to assist organizations in defending themselves against ransomware and other threats.  

Newly added capabilities were added, such as data loss prevention (DLP) for email and documents, sensitivity labels, and message encryption to help keep important data secured within the organization. On the compliance side, Microsoft has added powerful new compliance capabilities that help organizations reduce risk and respond to increasing regulatory requirements such as Content Search, eDiscovery, and core Litigation Hold. Built-in mobile device management (MDM) and other management tools like Microsoft Endpoint Manager help admins support remote and hybrid workforces. 

Microsoft pricing change 

Let’s take a look at Microsoft’s timeline. As we mentioned earlier, Office 365 was launched a decade ago. Then in 2017, which was just four years ago, Microsoft 365 was introduced to combine the best of Office, Windows, and Enterprise Mobility and Security (EMS).  

That same year Microsoft Teams was launched as well, and I know what you’re thinking… It’s now near impossible to imagine our lives without it, right? Well, to blow your mind a little bit more, since Microsoft 365 was launched, Microsoft has developed and released 24 applications to the existing suites (Microsoft Teams, Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, Stream, Planner, Visio, OneDrive, Yammer, and Whiteboard) and over 1400 new features in the three areas.  

On the increase, Jared Spataro, VP for M365 at Microsoft, had this to say: 

“We are announcing changes to our commercial pricing for Microsoft 365—the first substantive pricing update since we launched Office 365 a decade ago. This updated pricing reflects the increased value we have delivered to our customers over the past 10 years. “ 

Due to the innovation present and new features added, the value of Microsoft’s products are increasing exponentially. Coming March of 2022 there will be an update in the pricing list of the following commercial products: 

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic: from $5 to $6 per user 
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium: from $20 to $22 
• Office 365 E1: from $8 to $10 
• Office 365 E3: from $20 to $23 
• Office 365 E5: from $35 to $38 
• Microsoft 365 E3: from $32 to $36 

Please note that these prices will apply globally but will be prone to local market adjustments.  

It’s hard to believe that all of this has happened in only 10 years. Microsoft365 is composed of all the applications you need to stay connected and get things done. The hybrid office, process transformation, and secure cloud areas are in a state of constant innovation, and you do not want to miss out! With all this increased value Microsoft is adjusting their prices come March of 2022. As a partner, we want to help you with your transition regardless of where you are in your Microsoft journey, check out our brochure to learn what we’re all about!