July 21, 2016 - Update to the below blog.
Microsoft has released additional information on the new Secure Productive Enterprise offering. It will provide the following:
- On-premises productivity server entitlements including Exchange, SharePoint, and Skype for Business for any user licensed with Secure Productive Enterprise.
- One on-premises install of Office Professional Plus per user.
Microsoft announced on July 7th the Enterprise Cloud Suite (ECS) is being replaced with a new offering named Secure Productive Enterprise. I assume knowing how much Microsoft loves acronyms we should start referring to the new offering as the SPE.
Existing ECS customers who are being moved to the new SPE E3 on their next renewal should plan for an additional price increase beyond standard inflation based on the new capabilities noted in the above July 21 update to this post.
Windows 10 Enterprise is also getting renamed in this move and there will now be two editions, as shown in graphic 1 below. The new Windows 10 Enterprise E5 will contain Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection.
ECS customers need to carefully analyze this change and determine if the new offering will create duplicate software capabilities within their existing environment.
Graphic 1 (Source - Microsoft Corporation)
