The original Office 365 Licensing packages focused on layering Microsoft’s collaboration tools to their end users. Instead of just an email service, OneDrive added personal storage, SharePoint provided the company intranet, and Teams provided the collaboration workspace for users to come together and share ideas. These services were the core of the Microsoft offering.
Additional products quickly took shape in the coming years. As security began to take industry focus, the Defender platform grew into an industry leading suite of tools to protect the organization. Microsoft Intune offered tenants the ability to centrally manage corporate resources and personal mobile devices. Companies asked for additional ways to protect the user identity and corporate data, so Microsoft responded with Azure AD Premium, which offers robust access management solutions, and eventually Microsoft Purview. More services meant more licensing. More licensing meant more complexity to the landscape. Microsoft needed a way to blend their service offerings and simplify the delivery model.
What is M365 Enterprise E5
What came next was the Microsoft 365 (M365) Platform. The bread and butter of the M365 licensing bundles has always been meshing services from Microsoft’s collaboration, security, and Windows platforms. Whether you choose to utilize the M365 Business Suite or the M365 Enterprise Suite, you can expect a multitude of services that will help increase your organization’s productivity and security landscape, while reducing costs and consolidating licensing.
Here are Five (5) hidden benefits of the M365 E5 License:
Power BI Pro – Power BI is a powerful (no pun intended) business intelligence tool. The application help organization’s make meaningful visualizations of data to provide invaluable metrics and impactful insights. With Power BI Pro, users can create data visualizations and share their dashboards with both coworkers and external collaborators. The tool encourages users to dive into their data and explore for that critical piece of information that will improve their own service offerings. Power BI Pro normally costs $10 / user / month, but the license is included for free within the M365 E5 Bundle.
Virtualization Rights – Whether you are looking to provide cloud PCs to individuals in your organization through Windows 365, or you are looking for a unified remote experience through Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), you still must validate your ability to licensing the Windows operating system. Compute costs for these virtual systems do not cover the necessary licensing to allow your organization’s users to make use of the Windows operating system in a virtual environment. Having a licensed Windows laptop or desktop is not enough and could require companies to make significant investments into Windows Licensing. The M365 E5 License allows the end user to extend their local Windows license to the Windows 365 / AVD instance, thus satisfying Microsoft’s licensing requirements.
Teams Phone – To take full advantage of Microsoft’s phone system offering, you need licensing for 3 components. The Phone System, a Conferencing Plan, and a Domestic Calling Plan. The Phone System component allow the user to take advantage of auto attendant and call queue functionality. Conferencing allows users to provide a dial-in number when setting up personal Microsoft Teams-based conference calls. The M365 E5 provides the Phone System and Conferencing License to end users at no additional cost. Organizations previously taking advantage of the Business Voice without Calling Plan license can look to eliminate their license entirely. Calling Plans are the only additional requirement should an organization look to add routable DIDs to their users.
Microsoft Sentinel Ingestion Credits – Sentinel is Microsoft’s security information and event management (SIEM) solution. Collecting cloud data en masse and analyzing it enables organizations to proactively detect malicious attacks and minimize the adverse effects of a security incident. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps acts as a cloud access security broker, providing advanced analytics to detect and prevent cyber threats across all cloud managed services. This solution does come with a price tag that is based on the ingestion of information. The more you feed Sentinel, the higher the cost. The E5 license also includes insider risk management solution tools to help identify and mitigate internal threats before they can impact your organization. The M365 E5 Bundle provides an allotment of consumption credits for every licensed user to help offset the costs of running Sentinel, and includes Microsoft Defender to protect against sophisticated security threats. E5 customers are granted up to 5 MB / user / day of M365 data ingestion. While this may not sound like a lot, this can amount to thousands of dollars in savings a month. For more information, see the below link from Microsoft, which details the data types covered by the benefits.
Pricing: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/offers/sentinel-microsoft-365-offer/
Trainable Data Classifiers – Information Protection relies upon both the customer and Microsoft Purview to accurately classify data types. Organizations can manually classify sensitive data types and create automated pattern-based policies to tag sensitive information. Not all data can be easily placed into specific buckets and the data contained within may not adhere to uniform patterns. Trainable Classifiers learn how to identify your newly created data but examining it against past data classifications. The more robust your organization’s data classification abilities are, the less likely you organization will allow sensitive data to become exposed. Trainable Classifiers are only available to companies making use of the M365 E5 Bundle.
Learn about our Managed Microsoft 365 Services
Is M365 E5 Worth it?
For many of our customers, the transition away from various third-party services and solutions, along with the associated expenses of deployment, integration, and management, proves to be a significant cost-saving advantage that more than compensates for their M365 E5 license fees right from the start. The E5 license’s cohesive threat telemetry, automation, and remediation capabilities also significantly improve business operations.
Moreover, when factoring in any eDiscovery projects, the value of M365 E5 becomes even more apparent as it essentially pays for itself. The advanced eDiscovery and audit capabilities included in the E5 license are essential for both internal and external investigations, ensuring compliance and data integrity. It’s a decision that requires no second thought for enterprises seeking comprehensive compliance, data governance, and analytics capabilities.
Nevertheless, the benefits of M365 E5 extend beyond mere cost considerations.
One of the most notable advantages of this license plan lies in its ability to eliminate the reliance on third-party add-ons, empowering enterprises to centralize the management of their tools and services within a unified platform. For instance, Office 365 labeling policies can be utilized to drive actions such as Data Leak Prevention, Mobile Device Management, and Information Protection throughout the entire ecosystem, all easily managed, monitored, and reported in one centralized location.
This level of seamless integration is both exceptionally rare and immensely valuable, with no other license plan effortlessly achieving the same level of cohesion as M365 E5. Additionally, the E5 license provides tools to store business-critical data securely, ensuring compliance with regulatory and organizational requirements.
Ready for Microsoft 365 E5? Let Us Help
Navigating the vast array of Microsoft license plans to find the perfect fit for your enterprise can be an intimidating task. PSM Partner is here to ease your burden. As a distinguished Microsoft Solution Partner, we are uniquely positioned to guide you through the maze of options and help you make the optimal choice. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.