Office 365 Stand-Alone Offerings

Customers wanting to subscribe to individual component services rather than an entire Office 365 E-level suite can do so via a series of stand-alone offerings. However, because of the way the suites are discounted, customers interested in more than one component service are likely better off buying a suite. (See the illustration “Office 365 Suites for Enterprises“.) Prices quoted are per user per month and represent the highest a U.S. business customer would pay.

Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online are each offered in two levels, denoted Plan 1 and Plan 2; Plan 2 encompasses all Plan 1 features and adds others. Lync Online will likely get a Plan 3 late in 2011 or early 2012 when limited telephony support is added as a service option.

Besides access to online services, the individual Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online offerings include rights—in the form of Standard Client Access Licenses (SCALs) and Enterprise Client Access Licenses (ECALs)—to access the equivalent on-premises Microsoft products, a feature intended to simplify transitions to the cloud as well as to accommodate mixed on-premises/cloud deployments.