Cross-Shopping Microsoft 365 and Office 365 Suites

• Customers are increasingly being pushed toward Microsoft 365 E5 and beyond, but the cost and features offered by the services may not make sense for all users.
• Customers can license E5 for segments of their organization and mix and match subcomponents, but this practice will gradually cause license shortfalls and noncompliance.
• Frequent price increases can make piecemeal licensing a more expensive choice if not done carefully.

The path to Microsoft 365 increasingly leads organizations to Microsoft 365 E5, which includes most of Microsoft’s latest security and compliance capabilities. However, there is risk in only partially licensing the organization for E5, since these tools are typically enabled across the entire Microsoft 365 tenancy, and rarely perform license enforcement at a per-user level. As a result, all users within the tenancy need to be licensed for security and compliance services that are enabled, even if the services are only intended to benefit a segment of the organization’s users. This often requires organizations to license non-E5 users with more expensive à la carte licenses, and in many cases upgrade those licenses to Microsoft 365 E5 during their next renewal. This report discusses the four most common paths, what license challenges each may create, and some potential cost surprises.