Office 2016 Standard and Professional Plus Licensing

Office 2016 suites offered Per-Device through Microsoft volume licensing retain the same licensing model, editions, and pricing, while modest changes have been made to product use rights and Software Assurance (SA) benefits. Licensing-related changes described to date are not likely to affect customers who are considering SA or deciding whether to deploy Office 2016. However, licensing rules have not yet been released for Office Online Server, an important supporting component for the upcoming Exchange Server 2016 and SharePoint Server 2016.

This report covers Per-Device licensing for the 2016 versions of Office Standard and Office Professional Plus suites in Microsoft volume licensing. It does not address Office 365 ProPlus, the Per-User subscription suite sold in Office 365 plans.

What’s the Same

With Office 2016, the traditional Office suite licensing approach—purchasing perpetual licenses through volume licensing programs—remains intact. It is still based on a Per-Device licensing model, and in most cases, each client device used to display the Office 2016 user interface requires an Office 2016 license. Windows PCs and Apple Macs where Office executes locally require a license. Client devices used to interact with Office 2016 suites installed and executing on server-based desktops, such as those using Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH), or virtual desktop, sometimes called virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), architectures, also require licensing.