Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure Licensing overview

Now that you have learned about the Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure cloud services and their practical use for Power Platform solutions, it is important to understand the basics of the licensing of these services.

The purpose of this section is to provide a brief overview of the licensing options of Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure, including high-level price tags. Licensing details, which are very complex and change frequently, can be found in the various licensing guides published by Microsoft on a regular basis.

Understanding Microsoft 365 licensing

Microsoft 365 is a collection of mainly SaaS products, which is why the licensing is user/subscription-based. There are several plan-based, as well as individual product-based, licensing options:

Microsoft 365 Enterprise (F3, E1, E3, E5)

These plans are dedicated to enterprise customers and can be purchased directly from Microsoft or from Microsoft's partners. Prices vary between $10–$60 per user per month.

Microsoft 365 Education (A3 and A5)

These plans are dedicated to academic/school customers. Prices are approximately 10%–30% of those of the enterprise licenses.

Microsoft 365 Business (Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium, Apps for Business)

This plan is dedicated to small and medium business customers and can be purchased only from Microsoft's partners or directly on the web. Prices are approximately $20/user/month, and for non-profit organizations, approximately $5/user/month.

In addition to these plans, there are a variety of options available to purchase Windows 10 in various ways, as well as Office 365 and EM+S subscriptions of different types.

Note

Further details about Microsoft 365 licensing can be found in the following website: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/product-licensing/microsoft-365-enterprise

Learning about Microsoft Azure licensing

Microsoft Azure is a collection of IaaS and PaaS products and licensing and pricing are based on consumption. Azure can be purchased directly from Microsoft as well as from Microsoft Partners. It is recommended to use the Azure Pricing Calculator for the exact cost calculation for the various Azure services, since the calculation can be quite complex. Many Azure services are priced based on several metrics, such as compute time, storage space, and network traffic. There are pricing differences depending on the particular Azure region. Significant price savings of up to 80% can be achieved by using the reserved resources, where the customer commits to use certain Azure resources for a period of 1 year or 3 years.

Note

For more details Azure licensing, please refer to the following link: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/