Beyond E5—What's in GCC?

While Microsoft has continued to expand the number of premium features that require additional licensing beyond any available Microsoft 365 suite, there are four add-ons in particular that point to a new trend in how Microsoft charges for new features: 

• Entra ID Governance
• Intune Plan 2 and Intune Suite
• Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management
• Teams Premium.

These add-ons share three characteristics:

• Each requires a service included in one of the Microsoft 365 enterprise suites (E3 or E5) 
• Each has reasonably broad appeal to knowledge workers 
• Each would likely have been added for no additional cost to existing Microsoft enterprise suites, based on past trends, and later to Microsoft 365 G3 or G5, respectively.

The four add-ons add capabilities and pricing that exceed those of the premium Microsoft 365 E5 suite. This sets a tone: Customers can expect fewer “free” features to be added to the Microsoft suites and instead expect a continuing wave of add-ons at additional cost that potentially could be aggregated into a new premium Microsoft 365 enterprise suite at some point in the future.