Navigating Microsoft Licensing: Teams Exclusion in Cloud Suites

Hello and welcome to my Microsoft licensing blog, where I share my insights and tips on Microsoft licensing for businesses. Today I want to talk about a major change that Microsoft announced recently, which will affect how new customers can access Teams, the popular collaboration and communication platform.

Teams is currently included in many of the cloud suites that Microsoft offers, such as Microsoft 365, and Office 365. This means that customers who purchase these suites get Teams as part of their subscription, along with other cloud services and applications. However, starting from April 1st, 2024, this will no longer be the case for new customers.

This was initially only for EEU and Switzerland, starting from October 2023, but is now confirmed on global basis. Microsoft have decided to remove Teams from the following cloud suites for new customers:

1. The following cloud suites will no longer include Teams:
   1. Microsoft365 E3/ E5
   2. Office365 E1/ E3/ E5
   3. Microsoft365 F1/ F3
2. Teams Enterprise (or Essentials for under 300 users) is available as a separate license.

This does not impact existing customers, they can continue to use, renew, upgrade, and add seats to their current plans as usual.

Microsoft are not announcing any price increase, and the price of the new license without Teams included is cheaper – however, to then purchase Teams Enterprise license in addition would work out overall more expensive than pre-1^st April license with Teams included. This increase is approx. 5% to buy as two separate licenses.

Please note this does currently only impact new customers for the above cloud suites. This also only impacts commercials licensing suites, as Consumer, Academic, Government, and Nonprofit-specific SKUs are not currently impacted.

Please contact your licensing specialist or account team to learn more and ask any questions you have.

Ian Gerrard
Team Leader – Licensing Team