Office 365 Licensing sanity check

beta

Hello everyone!

I'm going cross-eyed looking at all the plans and add-ons Microsoft offers for Microsoft/Office 365 and was hoping to get some feedback.

Trying to get an idea of what it would cost us to move towards Office 365. We are a non-profit so I know it could technically cost us nothing, but I am looking at plans that give us access to the full Office applications and, where things really start to get a little complicated, is that we have a small department here that handles applications for the state and this department handles sensitive info like SSNs so advanced features like DLP and compliance features of Office 365 would be needed for this particular group.

Am I reading correctly that I can mix and match different subscriptions? For example, can I just buy the small subset of users that we need to ensure compliance with the advanced O365 licenses like E3+E5 Compliance add-on? And for majority of our users who don't touch this type of data a simple Nonprofit Business Standard?

Thank you!

scottalanmiller

Yes, E plans have always been mix and match as needed. Very flexible.

Dashrender

Are you moving you data as well? If not, then you likely don't need those advanced licenses.

dave_c

@beta said in Office 365 Licensing sanity check:

Am I reading correctly that I can mix and match different subscriptions? For example, can I just buy the small subset of users that we need to ensure compliance with the advanced O365 licenses like E3+E5 Compliance add-on? And for majority of our users who don't touch this type of data a simple Nonprofit Business Standard?

I am not used to non-profit licensing, but in CSP commercial licensing you can mix any kind of license within the same tenant.

dbeato

@dave_c said in Office 365 Licensing sanity check:

@beta said in Office 365 Licensing sanity check:

Am I reading correctly that I can mix and match different subscriptions? For example, can I just buy the small subset of users that we need to ensure compliance with the advanced O365 licenses like E3+E5 Compliance add-on? And for majority of our users who don't touch this type of data a simple Nonprofit Business Standard?

I am not used to non-profit licensing, but in CSP commercial licensing you can mix any kind of license within the same tenant.

You can mix as well for non-profits.

WLS-ITGuy

Look at Tech Soup. Great tool for Non-Profits. When we were figuring out what we needed for our move to O365 they were very helpful in assisting us with the right licensing and not getting things we didn't need.

dbeato

@WLS-ITGuy said in Office 365 Licensing sanity check:

Look at Tech Soup. Great tool for Non-Profits. When we were figuring out what we needed for our move to O365 they were very helpful in assisting us with the right licensing and not getting things we didn't need.

One thing about Tech Soup, they don't sell the Azure AD premium licenses.

WLS-ITGuy

@dbeato said in Office 365 Licensing sanity check:

@WLS-ITGuy said in Office 365 Licensing sanity check:

Look at Tech Soup. Great tool for Non-Profits. When we were figuring out what we needed for our move to O365 they were very helpful in assisting us with the right licensing and not getting things we didn't need.

One thing about Tech Soup, they don't sell the Azure AD premium licenses.

Forgot about that part...Ask me how I know

beta

Thanks all!

Yup, I know about TechSoup, I didn't think they sell O365 licenses directly though, I thought they just direct you to MS as you can get the MS donations directly from MS.

Basically, thinking a little more about what I need to accomplish in 365:

Keep all emails for 2 years (company policy). Currently we are using a 3rd party filter/archive service for our on-prem Exchange server. I was thinking if we moved to Exchange Online we could possibly get rid of that and use MS services? I know there are retention policies that can be configured, but wasn't sure what level of 365 is required.
We have small departments, 1 handles applications that contain SSNs, the other handles payment processing (so they touch CC numbers, although our policy is not to store these - we use a 3rd party payment processor). I'd want to protect the data these users handle by making sure it's not leaked or shared accidentally while still allowing them to make use of the collaboration tools like Teams and Sharepoint. I'd also like to restrict any such data from being downloaded to a home device (editing in the web app version of Office would be ok). That's why I figured I'd need something more than E3.

Thank you all again!