Office Professional Plus Subscription Offered with Office 365

[December 22, 2014 note: A more recent version of this report, updated to reflect licensing changes, can be found at www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/office%2C%20office%20365%20%26%20visio/secured/2014/12/office-365-proplus-or-office-2013-professional-plus.]

Customers can now buy a subscription license to Office Professional Plus as part of Microsoft’s recently released Office 365 offerings. Unlike existing options for volume licensing customers, the new 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 new licensing option doesn’t support Remote Desktop Services or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure deployments, as well as other forms of remote access, may lessen its appeal.

A New Way to License Office Professional Plus

Office Professional Plus 2010 became available Apr. 2010 through all Microsoft volume licensing programs; some programs offer perpetual licenses, and others provide subscription licenses (typically for a three-year term). In general, existing Office 2010 volume licensing options require a license for each device used to display the Office 2010 user interface—whether Office executes locally on the device or remotely on a server using Remote Desktop Services (RDS, formerly called Terminal Services) or virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).