Microsoft's school email bill gives rivals something to smile about
The fallout from Microsoft's education price rises and service cuts continues as institutions weigh the prospect of bigger bills, and the Windows maker's rivals struggle not to pull "I told you so" faces.
Key points
- The main takeaways are that free student email and collaboration services are being retired, and storage entitlements are changing.
- Foley cautioned that these were approximate figures, with actual prices set by Microsoft's partners.
- "Yet it's a bold move, given European governments are proactively following a digitally sovereign strategy." Switching suppliers still takes planning, and the alternatives won't necessarily replace every Microsoft service.
Multiply that across an institution, however, and something that used to be free becomes a recurring bill.
But the Windows behemoth has given educational institutions a fresh reason to investigate – and its rivals a particularly convenient opening pitch.
Additional details
- Meeks told us: "Schools now have a year to plan, and, in our experience with other large-scale educational projects, such as the University of Lille, that can be enough time to migrate properly." Other options include Nextcloud, which will be rolled out as part of Germany's Educational Cloud Infrastructure.
- Eligibility also requires full paid faculty coverage on A2 or higher and students who actively use Windows devices for education – potentially awkward for institutions running fleets of Chromebooks.
- Dr Patrick Alberts, managing director of messaging provider Element, told The Register: "When an organization is locked to a vendor, it should be no surprise when that vendor takes advantage.
- Mary Jo Foley of Directions on Microsoft put indicative student pricing at $2 per year for Microsoft 365 Education A2, $4 for A3, and $6 for A5, with Teams adding another dollar annually.
- The new no-cost student tier, Microsoft 365 Education A0, is a poor replacement for Office 365 A1: it excludes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Teams.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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