Are you ready for the changes in the Cloud?

On August 1, 2024, Microsoft will make two important changes to its offerings for educational organizations. Learn what these changes mean for your school's cloud strategy.

If your organisation uses Office365 A1 Plus, you may already know that this version will be discontinued this summer, and with it comes free unlimited cloud storage. This will mean that all educational organisations using MS Office 365 at very competitive prices will pay a significant premium for their licences.

Microsoft is making these changes because with the explosion in the use of cloud technologies, free unlimited storage has become not only unsustainable for cloud providers, but also a significant security risk for schools.

Below we'll take a closer look at what these changes mean for you and how to prepare for them.

Changes after termination of Office365 A1 Plus

Office365 A1 Plus is a free Office subscription that includes Office desktop applications for educational institutions that meet the manufacturer's qualification requirements. They have purchased Office for that entire institution (faculty and students) through Enrollment for Education Solutions (EES), Open Value Subscription Education Solutions (OVS-ES), Cloud Solution Provider (CSP), or a school contract.

When Office 365 A1 Plus is retired, A1 Plus licenses will automatically convert to the free version of Office 365 A1 without any action required by IT administrators. Your existing A3 or A5 licences will not be affected by this change.

While there aren't many differences between Office 365 A1 Plus and A1, there is one major difference to be aware of: the accessibility of desktop applications.

Office365 A1 offers access to mobile apps, but not access to desktop software.

If your teachers or students rely on these programs, consider upgrading to Office 365 A3 or A5 - in either case, access to desktop apps will be maintained even after you retire A1 Plus.

The following steps show you what to do to manage this change and mitigate any potential impact on users:

Step 1: Make sure you have an Office 365 A1 Plus subscription

Step 2: Identify users with Office 365 A1 Plus

Step 3: Plan to change licenses or move to an on-premise solution

If you decide that your users should be migrated to an A3 or A5 license, you can initiate these changes any time before the August 1, 2024 retirement date. If you plan to migrate A1 Plus users to A1, you can also make these changes any time before the August 1, 2024 retirement date to better align with your organizational goals and timeline. If you do not actively move users to an alternative licence, they will automatically be moved to an A1 licence on 1 August 2024.

Changes in Cloud Storage

Starting with your next contract renewal (but no earlier than August 1, 2024), Microsoft will adjust the storage allocation for your Microsoft 365 (M365) or Office 365 (O365) subscription. The following changes will occur:

• Education providers will receive 100 TB of free shared storage across OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange.
• From 1 February 2024, each free A1 user will be limited to a maximum of 100GB of OneDrive storage within the tenant's 100TB pool.
• Each paid A3 user will receive an additional 50 GB of pooled storage.
• Each paid A5 user will receive an additional 100 GB of pooled storage.

According to Microsoft, 99.96% of schools are nowhere near fully using their allocated storage, so it's very likely you won't need to adjust your cloud storage once these changes take effect.However, it's critical to prepare users who will be impacted by the changes for this fact. At the same time, plan proactively, as the above will undoubtedly mean an evolution in your strategies around Microsoft and cloud storage.

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