

The main reason for the name change is to reflect the way companies use Microsoft's services, Office, Windows, and Enterprise Mobility and Security (EMS) as a licensing bundle. For most enterprises, the name will be Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprises, and Microsoft will generally refer to it as Microsoft 365 Apps. will be collectively known as Microsoft 365 with an appropriate suffix based on your plan (i.e., Business Premium). In other words, the suite of productivity tools that your employees use on a daily basis - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.

Where does Microsoft 365 fit into this? First, you need to understand the vital distinction between the plan your organization is on and the Office Suite you are using, which do not necessarily share the same name.įor instance, if you are on the E1, E3, or E5 plan, your plan name has not changed, but what has changed is the version of Office 365 ProPlus that comes with your plan. Office 365 ProPlus? Microsoft 365? Office 365 E3? Microsoft 365 Apps For Enterprise?įor most enterprises that have migrated their organization to Microsoft's as-a-service version of Office, it is most likely known as Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 Business, or Office 365 E1, E3, or E5.

This post you are presently reading will serve as the new post for the Office 365 timeline, which will include the major changes in 2020/2021 that have been made. However, since there have been so many changes to Office 365, to avoid confusion, we are not going to update our Office 365 timeline post, but we will keep it for historical reference purposes. You can see our posts that we regularly update on the Windows timeline, and our Definitive Guide on Microsoft's X-as-a-Service page to have release and EOL dates and current terminology in one place. There have been a lot of changes in 2020 with regard to how Microsoft is servicing their as-a-service products such as Windows 10 and Office 365.
