Beyond Microsoft 365 A5—Navigating the Add-ons

There are four add-ons that have become generally available in the last three years 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.

First, they each require a service included in one of the Microsoft 365 educational suites (A3 or A5) or their enterprise or government equivalents. Second, each has reasonably broad appeal to knowledge workers. Lastly, based on past trends, each would likely have been added for no additional cost to existing Microsoft enterprise suites and more recently to Microsoft 365 A3 or A5, respectively. Note that these add-ons are available for educational and enterprise customers, but few are available for US Government customers (G3/G5.)

Instead, each adds capabilities and pricing that exceed those of the premium Microsoft 365 A5/E5/G5 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 top-shelf Microsoft 365 enterprise suite at some point in the future.