December Set as New Deadline for Move to New Office 365 Plans

Microsoft has updated its guidance for current users of Office 365 Small Business, Office 365 Small Business Premium, and Office 365 Midsize Business, effectively extending the time available to perform end-of-life for renewals.

If you have not made a start yet though, the
deadline is still quite tight. From December 1, 2015, you will still be able to add seats, receive all relevant updates, and renew existing Office 365 plans; but after this date, you will need to select one of the new plans when license comes up for renewal.

In October last year, Microsoft introduced three new Office 365 plans for SMB customers:

• Office 365 Business – includes core Office desktop applications—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook—with Office Online and 1TB of OneDrive for cloud storage.
• Office 365 Business Essentials – core cloud services plus business-class email and calendaring, Office Online, online meetings, IM, video conferencing, cloud storage, and file sharing. The core Office desktop applications are not included.
• Office 365 Business Premium – includes everything from both the Office 365 Business and Business Essentials plans.

All Office 365 plans come with a financially-backed 99.9% uptime guarantee and 24/7 technical support for critical, service-impacting events.