Purchasing Additional SharePoint Online Storage for Office 365

There are a number of different options for customers to purchase Office 365.  In the U.S.A. and the majority of markets, customers can purchase Office 365 directly from Microsoft via MOSP (Microsoft Online Subscription Program).  This is the most common way for small businesses to purchase Office 365.  Customers can purchase licenses using a credit card.  There is no minimum license quantity for MOSP.  Customers pay for Office 365 via an automatic monthly subscription.

In Australia, Telstra has a syndication agreement with Microsoft.  This means that customers who want to purchase Office 365 in Australia transact the purchase with Telstra.  This service is known as T-Suite.  Billing for T-Suite can be via a monthly credit card payment or the customer’s existing Telstra account.  After purchasing the licenses from Telstra, customers are provided with an Office 365 Org ID and password to access the new tenant.

Another option for customers to purchase Office 365 is via a volume license (VL) agreement.  For large enterprises that require 250 licenses and above, customers can purchase via an Enterprise Agreement (EA) or Enterprise Subscription Agreement (EAS).  Smaller customers that require between 5 – 249 licenses can purchase Office 365 via an Open Agreement.  VL agreements require a commitment of 1 – 3 years, depending on the agreement.  VL agreements are billed annually.  Customers who are based in Australia and wish to buy Office 365 directly from Microsoft can do so with a VL agreement.

There are many differences between Office 365 purchases via MOSP vs. VL.  The differences include:

1) The prices of the licenses

2) The frequency of the payments

3) The length of commitment

4) The types of SKUs which are available

It is important to consider all of these factors before making a decision on the best way to purchase Office 365 for your organization.

This blog will focus on one of the major differences between the Office 365 SKUs offered via MOSP vs. an Open agreement.

When customers purchase Office 365 and SharePoint Online, they are provided with 10 GB of storage by default.  This storage can be used to provision a number of different SharePoint Online websites including public and internal websites.  For each Office 365 and SharePoint Online user license purchased, the tenant is provided with an additional 500 MB of storage.  For example, a customer who purchases 10 E3 licenses will receive 10 GB + (10 users) * (500 MB) = 10 GB + 5 GB = 15 GB.  Please note that this pool of SharePoint Online storage is separate from the storage used by OneDrive for Business. Each users who runs OneDrive for Business is now given 1 TB of storage for personal files.

In some instances, customers may want to increase the amount of storage available for SharePoint Online.  Kloud Solutions works with many customers who would like to move their corporate file shares from an on-premises server to SharePoint Online.  The storage required for your file shares may exceed the default storage allocation in SharePoint Online.  Therefore, Microsoft has introduced the option for customers to purchase additional SharePoint storage on a per GB basis.

There are many different types of Office 365 plans that can be purchased.  You will first need to determine if your existing Office 365 subscription is eligible for additional storage.  SharePoint Online storage is available for the following subscriptions:

• Office 365 Enterprise E1
• Office 365 Enterprise E2
• Office 365 Enterprise E3
• Office 365 Enterprise E3 for Symphony
• Office 365 Enterprise E4
• Office 365 Midsize Business
• Office Online with SharePoint Plan 1
• Office Online with SharePoint Plan 2
• SharePoint Online (Plan 1)
• SharePoint Online (Plan 2)

SharePoint Online Storage for Small Business is available for the following subscriptions:

• Office 365 (Plan P1)
• Office 365 Small Business Premium
• Office 365 Small Business

If your subscription is one of the above eligible plans, you can purchase Office 365 via MOSP or the T-Suite portal for customers in Australia.

One of the key limitations to consider is that Microsoft does NOT offer the option to purchase additional SharePoint Online storage via an Open Agreement for small and medium businesses.  For instance, you can purchase 10 E3 licenses via an Open Agreement. This would provide 15 GB of SharePoint Online storage using the example above.  However, you would NOT be able to purchase additional GB of storage as the SKU is not available on the Open price list.

You can mix Open and MOSP licensing in the same Office 365 tenant.  For example, you could buy 10 E3 license via an Open agreement and then apply them to a tenant using an Office 365 product key.  If you wanted to buy an additional 3 GB of storage, you could do so via a credit card in the same tenant.  However, SharePoint Online storage must be tied to another license.  It cannot be purchased by itself.  So you would have to buy at least 1 additional E3 license via MOSP in order to add the additional 3 GB of storage.  This is something to consider when you are pricing an Office 365 solution.

For reasons of both simplicity and flexibility, Kloud Solutions recommends purchasing Office 365 via MOSP or T-Suite if you need additional SharePoint Online storage today, or if you think you may need it in the future.  Purchasing via MOSP or T-Suite allows you to keep your options open and plan for future storage growth.  Buying Office 365 via Open means that you are locked in to a certain storage allocation as determined by Microsoft.   There is no guarantee that Microsoft’s default storage allocation will meet your requirements.

It is very likely that Microsoft will increase the default storage allocation for SharePoint Online in the future.  The cost of storage is always declining according to Moore’s Law.  For example, Microsoft recently increased the amount of storage available in OneDrive from 25 GB to 1 TB.  Here is a blog post which references this change:

http://blog.kloud.com.au/2014/05/04/sharepoint-online-storage-improvements-in-office-365/

However, there have been no announcements from Microsoft to date indicating that they plan to increase the default storage for SharePoint Online beyond 10 GB per tenant or 500 MB per user.  There will be future posts to this blog about this topic if there are any relevant updates in the future.

If you have any questions about the different options for purchasing Office 365 from Microsoft or Telstra, please contact Kloud  Solutions using the following URL:

http://www.kloud.com.au/