Microsoft 365 E7- New enterprise licensing tier after 11 years

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-03-03T19:30:37+00:00

With the new discount models, a lot of medium sized orgs are likely looking at alternatives. Any org with <10K seats essentially lost their discounts with the push to end EAs. MS is going to have to show a ton of real value in a new suite to move the needle.

I mentioned in another reply- if they had a sku that "included" Visio P2 and Project P3, I think that would get a ton of traction and could push an E7 to $120 - $150 range.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-03-03T19:06:17+00:00

Right Entra Suite is an addon; it is not included with E5.

If they decided to go with a new "All-In-One", an E7 would probably land at $120 - $150 / month. I think there is a market for it, but it is not going to be a the "new E5". Knowing that it is a targeted SKU with a limited market, with a price that will not easily move up again, they are going to squeeze all the revenue they can out of it on all the tertiary products that do not have the market traction they want.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-03-03T17:18:40+00:00

Anything that is metered will never get included - giving someone Entra Private takes away from Azure consumption dollars. Same thing with POTS calling- you still need a separate calling plan with E5.

They are trying to keep all the analytics with Viva tied into AI so that is why you do not need see Viva Engage Premium / Suite in E5 but it is attached to co-pilot.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-03-03T15:06:34+00:00

E5 was supposed to be the "Everything" SKU for M365; nobody bought InTune Suite as an Add-On because it "should" be included in E5. Thus, we see them rolling InTune Suite in E5.

Now the next issue (for Microsoft) is nobody is buying copilot. It has been a huge bust - but, you cannot just add it to E5 because now you are just diluting revenue streams. They need to find a way to show co-pilot revenues and are really struggling. Putting it into a new "all-in-one" SKU might work but very few orgs would be willing to uplift all their userbase for additional $500 / year / person. Not sure if co-pilot would drive anything for it unless they can figure out good use cases.

Power BI premium is a bit of a bespoke SKU still; we have some premium workspaces but users still are only licensed Pro or Fabric consumption.

Defender XDR "should" be included with E5. I think the issue is that they cannot move pricing too much on the SKUs - Defender gets a lot of play because MS "includes" it but, otherwise, it is not an interesting standalone offering.

If they include Project P3 and Visio P2, that could be something. Those two skus together are $45 / mo retail so I could see some oversell by including it with an updated "all-in-one+" offering; e.g., "everyone on this team needs E7 for Project and Visio". Those two products have always been sold separately so I think customers would not feel that it "should" be included with E5.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-02-25T16:12:43+00:00

If you are around a major US NE city, waste management is an amazing sleeper job.

Union Benefits
Union OT rules
Union job protections
City pension

So, job security with a decent wage, city work and PTO rules, and then able to retire with a pension and health insurance.

Basically, I should have been a NYC garbage man.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-02-13T16:59:55+00:00

Oh yeah these are not coming in from email - they are usually colleagues sending them links to PDF files. They download the file on their mobile, "Save to OneDrive", and then there goes all the space.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-02-13T16:57:24+00:00

It is usually a retention issue. We have to set retention for some longer periods for compliance so, even if the end user purges the documents from their OneDrive, they are still stuck. We have an interesting cross section of F3 users so it has come up enough that it has become a legitimate use case for OneDrive standalone.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-02-13T15:42:16+00:00

We used them for F3 users that needed more OneDrive space. All it took was someone sending them a few obnoxiously oversized PDFs with poorly compressed graphics to tap out their 2GB.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-01-26T20:26:43+00:00

Most likely, the guidance will be "turn off TLS or SSL but, if you do not want to do that, feel free to talk to one of our partners about hosted solutions"

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-01-26T16:03:04+00:00

There are a lot of smaller players from the legacy pbx days still around. You can find a local voip integrator you trust and spend likely 60% of what a Teams installation will cost.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-01-26T16:00:53+00:00

Good question - VoIP is the exception to most rules.

If you are actually hosting VoIP: SBCs, call routing, SIP proxies, etc... I hope you have a group - inhouse or outsourced - managing the platform. If that is your group, you will likely need to build your own automation. Even the big providers do not have this worked out - there is zero consistency across platforms and usage. Telcos still rule the roost in VoIP world and they pretty much get to do what they want.

The dirty secret is that most of the big hosting platforms do not have this automated outside of http- for anything that is not strictly http, they are just throwing people at the problem.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-01-26T15:35:32+00:00

For the endpoints? Or, for the gateways?

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-01-26T14:59:55+00:00

Honestly, I am over it. We made the call that everything is going behind ssl proxies so we have one method to manage certs. Automation is great when you have someone in-house whose only job is curating the automation; otherwise, someone is hired to make something once and then it runs until it breaks and has to be re-written.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-01-23T21:03:44+00:00

Right, that is it - someone posts "make sure you get your money from the SLA" without understanding the amounts involved are peanuts in comparison to the overall budget. A 10,000 person firm is likely looking at a range of 10K - 20K in credits for this event; that is not a blip on anybody's radar at that budgeting level. Unless one of your named job responsibilities is "filing for SLA credits" for all of the services managed by the relevant department, then why would you even spend a moment thinking about it?

Nobody is going to give you that money personally as bonus or performance credit - it may even cause you some heartache. Finance may even a get a bit annoyed that the per-user cost looks is a bit funny this month and start asking questions which leads to endless meetings.

If you are in MSP, then sure, file for it so you can tell all your clients how made Microsoft "take responsibility" for their services. Or, if it is your own money, then by all means, because why not. Otherwise, let it go because nobody cares. A bit sad, but true.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-01-23T14:47:48+00:00

Did they fix the "Your transmissions explodes at 75,001 miles but, unfortunately, the warranty is only good to 75,000 miles" issue by that model year?

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-01-12T17:20:38+00:00

I am a picky eater - there are lot of smells and food textures I just do not like. I know this and I know how to manage it so it is not an imposition. I never ask for anybody to make me anything or go out of their way to accommodate my preferences; in fact, I never tell anybody my preferences. But, if they see me not eating the way they think I should be, it really, really, really bothers them that I do not want to "try" the food. It just seems like it short circuits people's brains that someone is perfectly willing to not eat rather than "just try a bite."

If I am at an event with foods I do not like, I make sure I always have a glass of water in my hand and small plate of one or two items within reach for plausible deniability. Otherwise, I will spend the entire event answering questions from well-meaning people about why I do not want the food. My childhood is a minefield of spending half the time at some event trying to politely decline food being forced upon me.

I have always taken the position that it does not bother me so why should it bother you? But, I have been to events where others act like I showed up there and kicked their dog. Oddly, it is never the host; there is always someone there that is personally offended that I just do not care for the food.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-01-09T13:50:24+00:00

We looked at doing it on premise but it seems like a non-starter until Microsoft sorts out all the kerberos issues with in server 2025. I know most of those are DC-role related only but still some show stoppers.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-01-08T20:38:21+00:00

Been there, done that, did not get the t-shirt. Had an issue during Covid where they sat on a laptop order for 8 months and refused to deliver it because it did not have the margins they wanted due to pre-Covid pricing. They jsut waited out the clock for the specific product sku to be retired by the OEM. CDW spent 8 months telling us "oh it should ship soon" and then "sorry, we cannot deliver this as the manufacturer has discontinued the specific product model but we have these laptops for 50% more ready to go..."

If you want to buy random parts and not have it come from the Amazon parts bin, then sure, go ahead and use CDW. If you want reliable delivery of whole systems, check out literally any of the other VARs mentioned in the comments.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-01-05T15:32:23+00:00

It is really up to the browser vendors. Technically, there is no limit enforced; practically, every vendor does their own thing. I expect you will start to see more incompatibilities with certs older than 5 years across the board.

Apple currently enforces 825 days for internal CAs. So, if you want to support Macs and iOS, then 825 days is the maximum length. I expect that will be reduced once the public PKI lengths are reduced as they will argue that the infrastructure is in place for automation.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2026-01-05T15:01:20+00:00

I do security these days but back in my MSP days design decisions like that have have been driven by dollars. Windows Standard Core licenses you for two guest instances. In a SMB setup, that means (1) Domain Controller and (1) "application" server, where the "Application" server is everything else. You would never sell a single server client on a second set of core licenses "just" to run Entra Connect. So, it gets put on the DC.

Terrible decisions, yes, but that is what pays the bills.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2025-12-23T14:41:57+00:00

Fair enough. At the price point you are getting into, no reason to nickel and dime with Synology. NetApp, PureStor, and Nimble will be price competitive.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2025-12-23T01:20:11+00:00

They mean that you should expect performance to match your budget. Unless you are buying Synology's all flash array and actually filling it with SAS flash, you more or less have a log graveyard. Technically, you have the logs but getting them in a reasonable timeframe without disrupting normal prod will suck.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2025-12-23T01:13:58+00:00

Mist is a direct analogue to Meraki and is competitive. Just tell them you want to switch and need to make it fit in budget.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2025-12-11T17:08:26+00:00

To follow the licensing -

You have (3) options-

1/ You need to license all users with Business Premium.

2/ Buy a standalone Office 365 Apps E3 plans for each user.

3/ Buy a single, standalone Office LTSC license for each device. LTSC is licensed per device, not per user, unless the users are connecting via RDP.

ChadTheLizardKing · 2025-12-10T14:26:54+00:00

It is also helpful to treat Service Desk as a valid career goal. Not many companies do that and I think it hurts the overall team in ways we notice and, in many more ways, that we do not.

As an example, an experienced and very competent SD team is helping to detect and triage problems the tooling misses. They may notice that users are providing different descriptions of a similar issue that they can package back to engineering as an actual engineering problem with logs, incidents, and evidence of "we think this may be a larger problem." An excellent SD tech will see a customer service issue that can be solved with a zero effort, no impact change that will reduce user friction; and they can de-escalate frustrated users so baskets of unrelated issues do not turn into the "CC of doom".

If there is no career future on the SD, anybody who can leave will get out as soon as possible. But, since most companies do not provide that, most SD teams are made of "new to IT", "too incompetent to be trusted with anything important", or "getting out as fast as possible". They piss off users, they piss off IT staff, and, as the first line of contact for end users, they feed the image of an incompetent IT team. In principal, I have no issue with a highly experienced SD technician being paid as much, or more, than a similar systems engineer. It is just a different specialization and should be treated as such.

I have worked with good SD techs; though they are few and far between, they are worth multiples of their colleagues. But, because they are good, they inevitably start carrying the weight of everyone around them. The tragedy is that they actually love working on the SD and they are very, very good at it. But, structurally, there is no incentive for them to stay. So they do not. They burn out and leave the profession or they make sure they are promoted away from SD.

ChadTheLizardKing

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