Moving from O365 E3 to Business Premium
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Hello folks!
We're thinking about downgrading our O365 E3 licenses to the Business Premium version to save some money. We have an on premise exchange server as well.
Before touching anything I would like to ask you if I'm missing something here:- Access would not be included anymore
- Since the Office version will change from Business to ProPlus we would need to reinstall the office software on the workstations
- Our on premise exchange would not be accessible from the outlook clients anymore since the business premium is only cloud based
- The mailboxes and their email will migrate automatically (after some minutes of panic where you can't see any mailbox during the migration)
Questions:
- we have some internal services that rely on our on premise exchange server to send some automated email (ie. Veeam Backup Notifications), would them be influenced by these changes?
- we have some distribution group configured on the on premise exchange, would them be influenced by these changes?
- Some users don't work on their local machine, they instead RPD to a way more powerful Hyper-V VM (one VM for each user), will this still work with Business Premium licenses?
- Any other thoughts?
Thank you
Davide -
Access is included in Business Premium isn't it? They added it in 2016 I believe
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@Carnival-Boy oh wow you're right, cool!
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Your Office version will change from ProPlus to Business. Not much difference for most people. It should be painless enough to reinstall using their deployment tool.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/overview-of-the-office-2016-deployment-tool
- Our on premise exchange would not be accessible from the outlook clients anymore since the business premium is only cloud based
I've only used Business Premium and don't have local Exchange, but I'm not sure why this would be true. It doesn't make sense so I would verify.
- we have some internal services that rely on our on premise exchange server to send some automated email (ie. Veeam Backup Notifications), would them be influenced by these changes?
- we have some distribution group configured on the on premise exchange, would them be influenced by these changes?
Maybe during the transition from E3 to BP, but otherwise no shouldn't have any effect.
- Some users don't work on their local machine, they instead RPD to a way more powerful Hyper-V VM (one VM for each user), will this still work with Business Premium licenses?
Yes, Business Premium now allows shared licensing... https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-365-Business-Blog/Shared-Computer-Activation-for-Office-in-Microsoft-365-Business/ba-p/472994
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I'm assuming you're aware of all other "limitations" of BP vs E3 such as not being able to manage Office Business via Group Policy, maximum of 300 users, etc. None of these are a deal breaker for us, but just making sure.
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@zachary715 yes indeed, I've skipped the more obvious limitations
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@zachary715 Thank you Zachary
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Not sure if this applies to downgrades but when a client went from BP to E3, the process meant their BP was cancelled, they were billed for the full year of E3 and then a prorated credit was issued about 45 days later for the BP subscription. Somehow, MS couldn't manage to bill only for the upgraded cost and had to issue new and cancel old. That was about a year ago so I'm not sure if they still do this but that was a PITA.
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@NashBrydges said in Moving from O365 E3 to Business Premium:
Not sure if this applies to downgrades but when a client went from BP to E3, the process meant their BP was cancelled, they were billed for the full year of E3 and then a prorated credit was issued about 45 days later for the BP subscription. Somehow, MS couldn't manage to bill only for the upgraded cost and had to issue new and cancel old. That was about a year ago so I'm not sure if they still do this but that was a PITA.
We couldn't get any sort of credit for our our ProPlus licenses when we moved to BP.
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@davide-bonavita said in Moving from O365 E3 to Business Premium:
- we have some internal services that rely on our on premise exchange server to send some automated email (ie. Veeam Backup Notifications), would them be influenced by these changes?
Yes. You can either setup a relay on-prem or in Office 365- or an account with a mailbox license (can use E1) that you can login to.
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@davide-bonavita said in Moving from O365 E3 to Business Premium:
Our on premise exchange would not be accessible from the outlook clients anymore since the business premium is only cloud based
Depends on how you have it setup. A lot of people will do a hybrid configuration, especially during a migration from on-prem to O365. I am assuming that you are in a hybrid mode, if you already are running E3 licenses. In terms of how it is affected if switching to BP, I can't say for sure, but it doesn't seem like it should matter.
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@davide-bonavita said in Moving from O365 E3 to Business Premium:
The mailboxes and their email will migrate automatically (after some minutes of panic where you can't see any mailbox during the migration)
I have switched some mailboxes from BP to E1 and vice versa and haven't really noticed anything. It is not with active users, so I can't say for sure. Test it out, but still do it after hours.
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@davide-bonavita said in Moving from O365 E3 to Business Premium:
we have some distribution group configured on the on premise exchange, would them be influenced by these changes?
Are you using AADConnect?
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@davide-bonavita said in Moving from O365 E3 to Business Premium:
Some users don't work on their local machine, they instead RPD to a way more powerful Hyper-V VM (one VM for each user), will this still work with Business Premium licenses?
I am pretty sure that since it is a single VM per user, you wouldn't run into a shared computer activation requirement.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/overview-of-shared-computer-activation-for-office-365-proplusIf you are using RDS on a single server VM that everyone was connecting to, then you would have to go that route.
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@davide-bonavita said in Moving from O365 E3 to Business Premium:
Since the Office version will change from Business to ProPlus we would need to reinstall the office software on the workstations
I would plan on removing and reinstalling it with the click to run using the business premium license option, but you should be able to just update the license. I ran into some systems, that didn't want to fully convert from ProPlus to BP when the user logged in after the licensing change. Normally, the user would be notified that they need to close out of the Office suite and it would automatically update the system to the new licensing version. This was about a year and a half ago, so it could be smoother. You can always test it to see what happens.
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@wrx7m said in Moving from O365 E3 to Business Premium:
@davide-bonavita said in Moving from O365 E3 to Business Premium:
The mailboxes and their email will migrate automatically (after some minutes of panic where you can't see any mailbox during the migration)
I have switched some mailboxes from BP to E1 and vice versa and haven't really noticed anything. It is not with active users, so I can't say for sure. Test it out, but still do it after hours.
It only takes a license change, the mailbox will continue to be available. Just a licensing change.
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Also Office 365 Business Premium supports Exchange in Hybrid Mode as well
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/exchange-online-service-description/exchange-online-service-description
with the following caveat
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I would hate to have to manage O365 and an on-premise Exchange server. Any plans to decommission that on-premise Exchange server? To relay LAN devices, we setup a Windows IIS server to relay the copiers, Veeam, notification emails. You create a mail flow connector in the O365 Exchange admin center to your Windows IIS box. We used Skykick when we migrated to O365, so all the email on the on-premises Exchange was migrated into the O365 accounts. I could not wait to get rid of our on-premises Exchange box after migration to O365. I’m sure you don’t want that thing anymore either.
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I've activated a Business Premium trial license on my account and deactivated the E3 license, everything looks good so far
The only strange thing is this, I suppose I just have to wait
UPDATE: I've manually removed the old subscription with the script "$Env:Programfiles\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.VBS". Everything still looks good so far
