Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365, formerly Office 365, is a line of subscription services offered by Microsoft which adds to and includes the Microsoft Office product line. The brand was launched on July 10, 2017, for a superset of Office 365 with Windows 10 Enterprise licenses and other cloud-based security and device management products.

On April 21, 2020, the consumer and small business plans of Office 365 were renamed Microsoft 365 to emphasize their current inclusion of products and services beyond the core Microsoft Office software family (including cloud-based productivity tools and artificial intelligence features). Most products that were called Office 365 were renamed as Microsoft 365 on the same day.

Microsoft 365 encompasses subscription plans that allow use of the Microsoft Office software suite over the life of the subscription, as well as cloud-based software-as-a-service products for business environments, such as hosted Exchange Server, Skype for Business Server, and SharePoint, among others. All Microsoft 365 plans include automatic updates to their respective software at no additional charge, as opposed to conventional licenses for these programs—where new versions require purchase of a new license.

The Office 365 branding remains in use for subscription plans targeting some enterprise markets.

History

As "Office 365"

Microsoft first announced Office 365 in October 2010, beginning with a private beta with various organizations, leading into a public beta in April 2011, and reaching general availability on June 28, 2011 with a launch aimed originally at corporate users, framing Office 365 as a successor to Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). Facing growing competition from Google's similar service Google Apps, Microsoft designed the Office 365 platform to "bring together" its existing online services (such as the Business Productivity Online Suite) into "an always-up-to-date cloud service" incorporating Exchange Server (for e-mail), SharePoint (for internal social networking, collaboration, and a public web site), and Lync (now Skype for Business) (for communication, VoIP, and conferencing). Plans were initially launched for small business and enterprises; the small business plan offered Exchange e-mail, SharePoint Online, Lync Online, web hosting via SharePoint, and the Office Web Apps, with the enterprise plan also adding per-user licenses for the Office 2010 Professional Plus software and 24/7 phone support.  Following the official launch of the service, Business Productivity Online Suite customers were given 12 months to migrate from BPOS to the Office 365 platform.

With the release of Office 2013, an updated version of the Office 365 platform was launched on February 27, 2013, expanding Office 365 to include new plans aimed at different types of businesses, along with new plans aimed at general consumers, including benefits tailored towards Microsoft consumer services such as OneDrive (whose integration with Office was a major feature of the 2013 suite). The server components were updated to their respective 2013 versions, and Microsoft expanded the Office 365 service with new plans, such as Small Business Premium, Midsize Premium, and Pro Plus. A new Office 365 Home Premium plan aimed at home users offers access to the Office 2013 suite for up to five computers, along with expanded OneDrive storage and 60 minutes of Skype calls monthly. The plan is aimed at mainstream consumers, especially those who want to install Office on multiple computers. A University plan was introduced, targeted at post-secondary students. With these new offerings, Microsoft began to offer prepaid Office 365 subscriptions through retail outlets alongside the normal, non-subscription-based editions of Office 2013, which, in comparison, are only licensed for use on one computer.

On March 19, 2013, Microsoft detailed its plans to provide integration with the enterprise social networking platform Yammer (which they had acquired in 2012) for Office 365, such as the ability to use a single sign-on between the two services, shared feeds and document aggregation, and the ability to entirely replace the SharePoint news feed and social functionality with Yammer. The ability to provide a link to a Yammer network from an Office 365 portal was introduced in June 2013, with heavier integration (such as a Yammer app for SharePoint and single sign-on) to be introduced in July 2013.

On July 8, 2013, Microsoft unveiled Power BI, a suite of business intelligence and self-serve data mining tools for Office 365, to be released later in the year. Power BI is primarily incorporated into Excel, allowing users to use the Power Query tool to create spreadsheets and graphs using public and private data, and also perform geovisualization with Bing Maps data using the Power Map tool (previously available as a beta plug-in known as GeoFlow). Users will also be able to access and publish reports, and perform natural language queries on data. As a limited-time offer for certain markets (but notably excluding the US), Microsoft also offered a free one-year Xbox Live Gold subscription with any purchase of an Office 365 Home Premium or University subscription, until September 28, 2013.

From April 15, 2014, Microsoft renamed the "Home Premium" plan to "Home,” and added a new "Personal" plan for single users.

In June 2014, the amount of OneDrive storage offered to Office 365 subscribers was increased to 1 terabyte from 20 GB. On October 27, 2014, Microsoft announced "unlimited" OneDrive storage for Office 365 subscribers. However, due to abuse and a general reduction in storage options implemented by Microsoft, the 1 TB cap was reinstated in November 2015.

In June 2016, Microsoft made Planner available for general release. It is considered to be a competitor to Trello and to other agile team collaboration cloud services.

In April 2017, Microsoft announced that with the ending of mainstream support for Office 2016 on October 13, 2020, access to OneDrive for Business and Office 365-hosted servers for Skype for Business will become unavailable to those who are not using Office 365 ProPlus or Office perpetual in mainstream support. In July 2019, Microsoft announced that the hosted Skype for Business Online service would be discontinued on July 31, 2021, with users being redirected to the Microsoft Teams collaboration platform as its replacement. Since September 2019, Skype for Business Online is no longer offered to new subscribers.

As "Microsoft 365"

For businesses
The "Microsoft 365" brand was first introduced at Microsoft Inspire in July 2017 as an enterprise subscription product, succeeding the "Secure Productive Enterprise" services released in 2016, and combining Windows 10 Enterprise with Office 365 Business Premium, and the Enterprise Mobility + Security suite including Advanced Threat Analytics, Azure Active Directory, Azure Information Protection, Cloud App Security, and Windows Intune.

Consumer launch
On March 30, 2020, Microsoft announced that the consumer plans of Office 365 would be rebranded as "Microsoft 365" (a brand also used by Microsoft for an enterprise subscription bundle of Windows, Office 365, and security services) on April 21, 2020, succeeding existing consumer plans of Office 365.

It is a superset of the existing Office 365 products and benefits, positioned towards "life,” productivity, and families, including the Microsoft Office suite, 1 TB of additional OneDrive storage and access to OneDrive Personal Vault, and 60 minutes of Skype calls per month. Under the brand, Microsoft will also add access to its collaboration platform Teams (which will also add additional features designed around family use), and a premium tier of Microsoft Family Safety. Microsoft also announced plans to offer trial offers of third-party services for Microsoft 365 subscribers, with companies such as Adobe (Creative Cloud Photography), Blinkist, CreativeLive, Experian, and Headspace having partnered. Two Microsoft 365 subscription plans succeeded the pre-existing Office 365 Personal and Home subscriptions (with the latter being renamed to "Family"), with no change in pricing.

Office 365 for small- and medium-sized businesses was also renamed Microsoft 365, with Office 365 Business and ProPlus becoming "Microsoft 365 Apps for business" and "Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise,” Office 365 Business Essentials becoming "Microsoft 365 Business Basic,” and Office 365 Business Premium becoming "Microsoft 365 Business Standard" (with the existing Microsoft 365 Business product becoming "Microsoft 365 Business Premium"). The Office 365 brand remains in use for its enterprise, education, healthcare, and governmental plans. Microsoft stated that "over the last several years, our cloud productivity offering has grown well beyond what people traditionally think of as 'Office',” citing examples such as Forms, Planner, Stream, and Teams.

Microsoft 365 is sold via Microsoft and its cloud services reseller network.

Plans
Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) is available in various subscription plans aimed at different needs and market segments, providing different sets of features at different price points.  These include:

Consumer
Aimed at mainstream consumers, both plans offer access to Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, and Access for home/non-commercial use on one computer (Windows, macOS, and mobile devices), with access to additional online-based services and premium creative content, 1 TB of OneDrive storage with Advanced Security, 60 minutes of Skype international calls per month (subject to area), and partner offers.

Microsoft 365 Personal (formerly Office 365 Personal): Includes access to Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft OneNote, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Publisher & Microsoft Access for home/non-commercial use on up to five computers, phones or tablets (PC, Mac, Android, iOS or Windows RT). Additional benefits include 1 TB of additional OneDrive storage and 60 minutes of Skype international calls per month (subject to area). A version of Personal purchased on a discounted four-year plan, known as Office 365 University, allowing use on two devices by one user, used to be available for those in post-secondary institutions. Microsoft has also offered Office 365 subscriptions to students of institutions who have licensed Office software for their faculty.
Microsoft 365 Family (formerly Office 365 Home): Aimed at mainstream consumers and families; same as Personal, but for use on up to five devices per person by up to six users.

Small Business

 Microsoft 365 Apps for business (formerly Office 365 Business): Offers Office applications for Windows, Mac, and mobile platforms for up to five computers, tablets, and smartphones per user. 

 Microsoft 365 Business Basic (formerly Office 365 Business Essentials) is suitable for small and medium-sized businesses. It includes Office 365 web-apps: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, OneNote, as well as Exchange, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive with  1 TB.

Microsoft 365 Business Standard (formerly Office 365 Business Premium) includes Microsoft 365 Business Basic and Microsoft 365 Apps for Business.
 
Microsoft 365 Business Premium (formerly Microsoft 365 Business) is the best choice for businesses with up to 300 employees. It includes Microsoft 365 Business Standard and additionally: Windows 10 Business, Azure Virtual Desktop, Azure AD P1, Microsoft Intune, defender for Office 365.

Enterprise

Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise (formerly Office 365 ProPlus) like Microsoft 365 Apps for Business with additionally support of group policy, can be installed in RDS Server, for unlimited users.

Office 365 Enterprise: Intended for use in corporate environments. Provides access to all Office applications and hosted services, as well as business-specific features and regulatory compliance support. Office 365 Enterprise is available in versions E1, E3, E5 and for Education in A1, A3, A5.

Microsoft 365 Enterprise: is a bundle of Office 365 Enterprise, Windows 10 Enterprise and Enterprise Mobility + Security. Microsoft 365 Enterprise is available in versions E3, E5 and for Education in A3, A5.

Other
Office 365 operated by 21Vianet: Microsoft has licensed 21Vianet to provide Office 365 services to its China customers. Microsoft does not operate Office 365 in China; instead, 21Vianet does. The service differs in features from the service offered elsewhere.

Comparison

Components

Office 365

The Office 365 service consists of a number of products and services. All of Office 365's components can be managed and configured through an online portal; users can be added manually, imported from a CSV file, or Office 365 can be set up for single sign-on with a local Active Directory using Active Directory Federation Services.  More advanced setup and features requires the use of PowerShell scripts.

Outlook 

The email service, task management, calendar application, and contacts manager included with business and enterprise Office 365 subscriptions are under the Outlook on the web brand. It includes Outlook Mail, Outlook Calendar, Outlook People, and Outlook Tasks.

In October 2017, the existing Outlook.com Premium service was discontinued and folded exclusively into Office 365, with all Personal and Family subscribers subsequently being upgraded to 50 GB of storage.

Users with a Microsoft 365 Family or Personal subscription are entitled to associate a personalized email address with their Outlook mailbox.

Office applications
Some plans for Office 365 also include access to the current versions of the Office desktop applications for both Windows (Office 2019) and macOS (Office for Mac 2016) for the period of the subscription. On Windows, it is installed using a "click-to-run" system which allows users to begin using the applications almost instantaneously, while files are downloaded in the background. Updates to the software are installed automatically, covering both security and feature updates. If an Office 365 subscription lapses, the applications enter a read-only mode where editing functionality is disabled. Full functionality is restored once a new subscription is purchased and activated.  Publisher, Access and InfoPath are available on Windows only, and are not available for install on Mac operating systems.

Access to the Office Mobile apps for Android and iOS devices (including both smartphones and tablets) were originally limited to Office 365 subscribers but basic editing and document creation has since been made free for personal use. However, Office 365 is still required to unlock certain advanced editing features, use the apps on devices with screens larger than 10.1 inches, or to use the apps for business use. Outlook Groups was also made available as an app on Windows 10 Mobile.

Hosted services
Business and enterprise-oriented plans for Office 365 offer access to cloud-hosted versions of Office's server platforms on a software as a service basis, including Exchange, Skype for Business, SharePoint, and the browser-based Office Web Apps suite.  Through SharePoint's OneDrive for Business functionality (formerly known as SharePoint MySites and SkyDrive Pro, and distinct from the consumer-oriented OneDrive service), each user also receives 1 TB of online storage.  Certain plans also include unlimited personal cloud storage per user.

In lieu of Microsoft's enterprise software, Home plans for Office 365 include premium enhancements for Microsoft's consumer-level online services, including 1 terabyte of OneDrive storage for each user, along with 60 minutes of phone calls per month on the Microsoft-owned Skype VoIP service.

On business plans, Office 365 also includes cloud-based collaboration services such as Delve, Microsoft Teams, and Yammer.

Office 365 Education

Office 365 Education, formerly Office 365 for Education and Microsoft Live@edu, is a free suite of hosted Microsoft services and applications that is intended for educational needs.

The program provides education institutions with a set of hosted collaboration services, communication tools, and mobile, desktop, and web-based applications, as well as data storage capabilities. The suite includes Microsoft applications for collaboration including: Office Live Workspace, Windows Live SkyDrive, Windows Live Spaces, Microsoft SharedView Beta, Microsoft Outlook Live, Windows Live Messenger, and Windows Live Alerts.

The suite is part of Microsoft Education Solutions. With the Microsoft Live ID, the student can sign-in and access multiple Microsoft applications such as Outlook Live, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Spaces, Windows Live SkyDrive, Windows Live Mobile, and others. Universities, colleges, and schools can enroll in the program through a free registration process.

In 2012, Live@edu moved under the umbrella of the Microsoft Office 365 service. The former Outlook Live Answers portal, a forum for asking questions on the Live@edu service, was discontinued on December 17, 2012. Transition was intended to be complete by September 2013.

Updates
The Microsoft 365 platform uses a rolling release model; updates to the online components of the service are provided once per quarter. On launch, the 2010 versions of server components were used with Office 365. These services were automatically upgraded to their Office 2013 counterparts upon its release in February 2013. With the introduction of Office 2013, Office division head Kurt DelBene stated that minor and incremental updates to the Office desktop software would be provided on a similarly periodic basis to all Office 365 users by means of the streaming system, as opposed to the three-year cycle for major releases of Office that had been used in the past. Microsoft 365 retains this update model.

Although there are still "on-premises" or "perpetual" releases of Office on the three-year cycle used before, these versions do not receive new features or access to new cloud-based services as they are released on Office 365.

Security 
In December 2011, Microsoft announced that the Office 365 platform was now compliant with the ISO/IEC 27001 security standards, the European Union's Data Protection Directive (through the signing of model clauses), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act for health care environments in the United States. At the same time, Microsoft also unveiled a new "Trust Center" portal, containing further information on its privacy policies and security practices for the service. In May 2012, Microsoft announced that Office 365 was now compliant with the Federal Information Security Management Act: compliance with the act would now allow Office 365 to be used by U.S. government agencies.

In spite of claiming to comply with European data protection standards, and in spite of existing Safe Harbor agreements, Microsoft has admitted that it will not refrain from handing over data stored on its European servers to US authorities under the Patriot Act.

In Finland, FICORA has warned Office 365 users of phishing incidents and break-ins that have caused losses of millions of euros. In September 2019, NCSC-FI (National Cyber Security Centre of Finland) created a detailed guide on how to protect Microsoft Office 365 against phishing attempts and any data breaches.

In July 2019, the German state of Hesse outlawed the use of Office 365 in educational institutions, citing privacy risks.

In December 2020, the US Department of Commerce was breached via Office 365. The attackers spent several months able to access staff emails.

A July 1, 2021 cybersecurity advisory from British and American (NSA, FBI, CISA) security agencies warned of a GRU brute-force campaign from mid-2019 to the present (July 2021) that focused a "significant amount" of activity on Microsoft Office 365 cloud services.

In September 2021, a vulnerability was discovered in Office 365 applications which was being actively exploited by hackers which could lead to remote code execution, it is identified as CVE-2021-40444.

Reception

As "Office 365"
TechRadar gave the 2013 update of Office 365 a 4.5 out of 5, praising its administration interfaces for being accessible to users with any level of expertise, the seamless integration of SkyDrive Pro into the Office 2013 desktop applications, and the service as a whole for being suitable in small business environments, while still offering "powerful" options for use in larger companies (such as data loss protection and the ability to integrate with a local Active Directory instance). However, the service was severely criticized for how it handled its 2013 update for existing users, and its lack of integration with services such as Skype and Yammer.

In the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2017, Office 365 revenue had exceeded that of conventional license sales of Microsoft Office software for the first time.

See also
 Windows 365
 Google Workspace
 Microsoft Endpoint Manager

References

Further reading

External links
 – official site

Microsoft cloud services
 
365
Subscription services