Listicle 3 Factors to Consider Before Upgrading Your Microsoft 365 Licensing
By Insight Editor / 29 Jun 2021 / Topics: Microsoft 365 Cybersecurity
Is a Microsoft® E5 licensing upgrade really with your investment? In this listicle, discover the three factors you should consider when choosing your Microsoft enterprise licensing.
Accessibility note: The listicle is transcribed below the graphic.
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3 Factors to Consider Before Upgrading Your Microsoft 365 Licensing
Is E5 worth your investment? Chances are, your enterprise is invested in the Microsoft® software suite in one way or another. Microsoft holds over 40% of the global market for office suites with Office 365® being used by over a million companies worldwide.1 But, with many different licensing plans to choose from, we’re not all invested in the same way.
In this list, we’re comparing two of the most well-known licensing plans, Microsoft 365™ Enterprise E3 and E5. There’s a step-up cost for E5 licensing, but are the extra features worth your investment? Let’s find out.
Factor #1: The cost
The step-up fee to upgrade to E5 licensing from E3 is an extra $25 per user/month. This upcharge will land you enhanced capabilities around telephony, analytics and, most importantly, security and compliance. Microsoft states that the combined value of this additional functionality amounts to $108 per user/month when purchased from stand-alone services.
- E3 licensing costs $32 per user/month
- E5 licensing costs $57 per user/month
Bottom line: For $25 extra per user/month, you get additional functionality worth around $108 per user/month.
Factor #2: Vendor consolidation
According to a recent report, 47% of enterprises manage more than 10 vendor relationships and 87% say multivendor management is not easy.2 While they may provide best-in-class solutions, having so many vendors is a drain on the budget and their effectiveness is limited when they don’t talk to each other. Having too many vendors can reduce efficiency, create silos and lead to blind spots in security.
If having too many vendors is a challenge for your enterprise, then an upgrade to E5 licensing could be a good move. E5 delivers a robust portfolio of capabilities that can fully replace many of the vendors you’re currently using for:
- Security ─ identity and access management, endpoint protection, email protection, intrusion detection and prevention
- Compliance ─ access control, encryption, governance, audit protection
- Collaboration ─ calling, video and audio conferencing, cloud PBX
- Analytics ─ advanced business intelligence, employee monitoring
According to Microsoft, Rackspace, a U.S.-based technology company, was able to replace 30 third-party solutions with Microsoft 365.3
Bottom line: You can cut the fat with an E5 upgrade and likely save money in the process.
Factor #3: Security and compliance
With high-profile cyberattacks appearing in the news more and more, security has become a major point of interest for companies everywhere. In addition, compliance regulations are ramping up and many organizations will struggle to meet an acceptable level for strict new requirements, such as NIST, ISO, CMMC and HITRUST.
This is perhaps the biggest reason to consider upgrading to E5. An E5 upgrade will enable the use of:
- Advanced Threat Protection to guard against phishing and malware schemes
- Microsoft Cloud App Security for access management and data classification
- Azure Information Protection P2 for automatic sensitivity labeling
- Microsoft 365 Compliance to simplify compliance and reduce risk
Microsoft 365 Security covers more than 27 different areas of security specialization. As a leader in five Gartner magic quadrants, this solution tops any list of modern cloud security offerings. By upgrading to E5 and unlocking Microsoft 365 Security, you can improve your security posture while consolidating your security vendors and saving an average of 52%.4
Bottom line: Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance might be reason enough to invest in an E5 upgrade.
Sources:
1 Statista. (2021, May 10). Market share of major office suites technologies in the United Sates as of October 2020.
2 Insight. (2020, June 15). Driving Business Value Through Vendor Consolidation.
3 Microsoft. Rackspace Accelerates Global Collaboration and Saves $411,000 With Office 365.
4 Microsoft. (2021). Simplify Security. Save 52%. [PowerPoint slides].
