Microsoft 365 Commercial Sees Price Increase- What Does it Mean for GCC/GCC High?
Celebrating a decade of #Office365 and four years of #Microsoft365, Microsoft reminisced in its recent release (08/19/21) on how far the platform and solution ecosystem has come. 24 apps and 1,400 new features and capabilities have been released for Microsoft 365 since its inception, many of which are present or rolling into Microsoft 365 GCC High and Office 365 GCC High at a much higher rate. ?Matt Littleton, Global Advanced Compliance Specialist at Microsoft, remarked at a recent?CS2?Virtual event that Microsoft product engineering teams are now collaborating across Commercial Cloud and US Sovereign Cloud lines during the entire lifecycle of feature/capability development to increase the rate of release in GCC/GCC High/Azure Government.
The pricing changes will go into effect in six months on March 1st - 2022, but there is no key indication if or when GCC High will be impacted.
So you're saying there's a chance?
There have been no significant licensing price changes to the 'core' SKUs (Office 365 E1/E3/E5 & Microsoft 365 E1/E3/E5) in GCC High since becoming available to commercial businesses under 500 licensed users through the AOS-G program. Commercial Office 365 hasn't experienced a significant price change in roughly 10 years; thus, it could be unlikely to see GCC High altering any time soon. Also, pricing considerations for this 'version' of the platform are uniquely different because the development and underlying operating costs for the platform are separated from Commercial.
As described in this brief explainer from Summit 7's Scott Edwards, the newly formed US data centers and all of the reconstruction of Office 365 from the ground up drove the initial price point for GCC High. In addition, these data centers and every facet of support is US-based as compared to the global 'follow the sun' support model of Microsoft's Commercial cloud offerings. Therefore, these costs are relatively fixed and tethered to the consumer's bill. Lastly, the pricing changes occurring within Commercial Office 365/Microsoft are due to consumption growth - which is at a staggering 300 million commercial paid seats. The Defense Industrial Base (DIB) is one of the largest consumers of GCC High; however, the platform's adoption cycle has yet to reach this stage.
Nevertheless, Microsoft may decide ultimately to raise rates across all of their platform offerings. It would likely be a delayed notice and price increase to GCC High if this were the case. A good bet would be to follow the?Microsoft Public Sector blog?for future communications on the matter.
In other licensing news
Microsoft also announced unlimited dial-in capabilities for Microsoft Teams meetings across government suites over the next few months, but there is no set date for GCC and GCC High. Outside of this update from the article, several new SKUs have hit GCC High in the last several months:
For reference to these changes and other GCC High licensing availability, you can download the "Microsoft 365 Licensing Guidance for DoD Contractors" here.