Today, Microsoft announced that it will be rebranding some of its SME Office 365 subscriptions. From April 21, 2020 the Office 365 subscriptions available to small and medium-sized businesses will use the Microsoft 365 brand.

If you’re using an Office 365 subscription, you might wonder what this change means for your business. Microsoft have announced that this is simply a change to the product name only, and there are no pricing or feature changes at this time. This means nothing will change for your business, other than the name of the subscription that you are using. The impacted subscriptions are:

• Office 365 Business Essentials. Office 365 Business Essentials will become Microsoft 365 Business Basic.
• Office 365 Business Premium. Office 365 Business Premium will become Microsoft 365 Business Standard.
• Microsoft 365 Business. Microsoft 365 Business will become Microsoft 365 Business Premium.
• Office 365 Business and Office 365 ProPlus. These will both become Microsoft 365 Apps. Microsoft state that they will use the labels ‘for business’ and ‘for enterprise’ to distinguish between the two where necessary.

So why have Microsoft made these changes, and what impact will they have going forward?

In the same announcement, Microsoft stated that these changes “represent our ambition to continue to drive innovation in Microsoft 365 that goes well beyond what customers traditionally think of as Office.” Further, the announcement states that new innovations will be added in the coming months.

The new branding seemingly aims to clarify what you get from an Office 365 subscription: way more than just the Office Suite, with much more to come in the future. On top of the Office Suite, 365 subscriptions include applications and experiences such as Teams, Forms, and Planner. Microsoft say they’ll be “breathing new life into these apps with the help of cloud and AI”, so there’s plenty to look forward to in the future.

We’ll keep you updated as Microsoft continue to announce how they’re innovating and how the rebranded Office 365 subscriptions will change over the months and years to come.