What you need to know:
A new Teams service plan will enable users licensed for the applicable SKUs to receive forthcoming Teams capabilities. Rather than being a way to charge more for a ‘higher Teams’, is it more of a bucket to deploy profession features into the existing paid subscriptions?
On 9th February 2021 Microsoft published a message centre post regarding a new Teams Pro service plan. This was shared on Twitter by Vesa Nopanen:
Microsoft have since updated the message as follows:
“Based on early feedback we have updated this post to provide additional clarity. Thank you for your feedback. On Feb. 9, we published an MC [MC238782] post regarding a new Teams Pro service plan. To clarify, there is no change to existing product licenses with the addition of this new service plan. Rather, the service plan will be added automatically to Microsoft 365 and Office 365 E5/E3/A5/A3, and Microsoft 365 Business Standard/Business Premium licenses, and will enable users who are licensed for these SKUs to automatically receive capabilities rolling out to Teams in the near future”.
This topic has created quite a bit of interest, and was brought up by Mary Jo Foley on the Windows Weekly podcast at the weekend, she also covered this on her blog.
What you need to do:
Nothing. By default, the Teams capabilities included in this service plan will become automatically available to all users with the licenses listed above.
Microsoft: “There is no action required by admins, and no additional purchase is necessary for Microsoft 365 and Office 365 E5/E3/A5/A3 and Microsoft 365 Business Standard/Business Premium licensed users to acquire the new Teams capabilities that will be part of the Teams Pro service plan”.
Availability:
This new Teams service plan to be added to select M365 and O365 SKUs Mid-March 2021.
