Microsoft's (and competitor's) commitments during COVID-19

With COVID-19 continuing to impact people and countries around the world, teams everywhere are moving to remote work. Here at Microsoft in our Brussels/Zaventem offices we are giving our teams the choice to come to the office or to work from home if that feels better. At Microsoft, our top priority is the health and safety of employees, customers, partners, and communities.

By making Teams available to as many people as possible, we aim to support public health and safety by keeping teams connected while they work apart. That is why we have decided to make Teams available for free while we grasp with the COVID-19 virus.

Making Teams available for everyone

Teams is a part of Office 365. If your organization is licensed for Office 365, you already have it. But we want to make sure everyone has access to it during this time. Here are some simple ways to get Teams right away.

Individuals

If you want to get started with Teams, we can get you up and running right away.

• If you have an email address through work or school, sign in using this link. We’ll get you into Teams in no time.
• If you’re using an email address like Gmail or Outlook, you can sign up for the freemium version of Teams by following this link.

IT professionals

The self-service links above work great for individuals, but if you’re an IT professional who wants to roll out Teams centrally, here’s what to do.

• If you work for a business that isn’t currently licensed for Teams, we’ve got you covered with a free Office 365 E1 offer for six months. Contact your Microsoft partner or sales representative to get started today. (Note: the same offer is available in the Government Cloud, but not available in GCC High and the Department of Defense.)
• If you work in education and want to set up teachers, students, and administrators on Teams, use Office 365 A1. This free version of Office 365 is available to all educational institutions. Sign up by following this link.

To be honest I have been hesitant in writing this post as I fully realize that some might see this as opportunistic, which is why I'm also referencing here an article of Zdnet summarizing similar offers from our competitors: https://www.zdnet.com/article/video-conferencing-deals-coronavirus-spurs-offers-from-webex-google-and-others/