What is in the three Business licences?
For SMEs Microsoft sells three Business licences. They share the same base and add apps and security as you go up:
- Business Basic: an Exchange mailbox, Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint, and Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook in the browser and on phone and tablet. No desktop apps on the laptop.
- Business Standard: everything in Basic, plus the Microsoft 365 desktop apps for Windows and Mac. Each user can install them on several of their own devices.
- Business Premium: everything in Standard, plus security and management: Intune for device management, Entra ID P1 with conditional access, Defender for Business for the laptops, Defender for Office 365 with Safe Links and Safe Attachments, and information protection such as sensitivity labels and data loss prevention.
All three are capped at 300 users. If you have more people, look at the Enterprise licences. Exactly what is in a licence, and whether Teams is included, changes from time to time. In the European Union Microsoft also offers versions without Teams. So check what you are buying when you order.
When Basic is enough
Basic suits staff who mostly work on a phone or in the browser: people in the warehouse, on site, front of house or on the road. They need email and Teams and open a document now and then. Basic covers that. What they do not get is Outlook or Excel on their own laptop. If someone works with large files or macros in browser Excel, they will quickly hit its limits.
When you need Standard
Standard suits office staff who work in Outlook, Word and Excel on the laptop all day, and anyone who wants to edit files offline. Note that Standard has the same security as Basic. If you want to manage laptops remotely, limit access to managed devices or wipe a stolen laptop remotely, Standard does not offer that.
When Premium is the right choice
Premium costs more per user, but often replaces separate products. It is the right choice if you:
- want to manage laptops and phones centrally, for example for BitLocker disk encryption or device compliance;
- want only managed devices or certain countries to get access, with conditional access;
- want antivirus with a central overview, without a separate product;
- work with customer data and want to stop it leaving by accident;
- get security questions from customers or your insurer, for example because of NIS2 in the supply chain.
Much of the security advice in these Insights needs Premium. Without that licence you cannot set it up, or only halfway.
Mixing licences
You do not have to give everyone the same licence. Within one Microsoft 365 tenant the field staff can have Basic, the office Standard, and management and finance Premium. Keep in mind that security such as conditional access and device management only works for users with the right licence. An attacker looks for the weakest account. If you want to protect the whole company, Premium for everyone is often the simplest and safest choice, or you combine Basic or Standard with separate security add-ons.
Do not pay for licences nobody uses
A leaver who still has a licence costs money every month. So check at least every quarter which licences are assigned and whether those people still work for you. Disable inactive accounts, remove the licence, and include it in your joiner and leaver process. When cancelling or scaling down, mind your subscription term: on an annual subscription you can often only reduce licences at the end of the term.
What Floor ICT does
Floor ICT makes an overview of who has which licence and what that person actually uses. You then get a proposal per role: who needs Basic, Standard or Premium, and which security you can set up with it. After your approval we adjust the licences, clean up unused ones and set up the Premium security properly. Which employee gets which licence remains your decision.