Appendix: Office Professional Plus Subscription Offered with Office 365

Customers can buy a subscription license to Office Professional Plus as part of Microsoft’s Office 365 offerings. Unlike other options for volume licensing customers, the Office Professional Plus for Office 365 subscription is licensed per user (rather than per device) and allows installation on up to five devices per license. This option, combined with advantageous pricing, could make it an attractive licensing alternative for some customers. However, the fact that this licensing option doesn’t support a number of enterprise deployment and remote access options may lessen its appeal.

A New Way to License Office Professional Plus

Office Professional Plus for Office 365 appeared in June 2011 with the introduction of Office 365 subscription offerings. Three of the four major Office 365 components—Exchange Online, Lync Online, and SharePoint Online—are services hosted in Microsoft data centers, and the fourth, Office Professional Plus for Office 365, is on-premises software. Office 365 components can be acquired individually or in one of several subscription bundles, all licensed per user, per month.