Microsoft recently announced that it will be adding its Azure Active Directory Premium P1 license to Microsoft 365 Business Premium (formerly Microsoft 365 Business) subscriptions. This is great news for small and medium-sized business (SMB) customers. The Azure AD P1 license—we’ll just call it P1 to keep things simple—brings a powerful set of enterprise security, identity and access control tools to what will now certainly be Microsoft’s flagship cloud offering for SMBs. And it does so at no added cost.

Click Settings, and then under My app settings, choose Office 365. On the My account page, choose Subscriptions. You’ll see the services that you're licensed to use, such as the latest desktop version of Office, SharePoint in Microsoft 365 or OneDrive for work or school, and Exchange Online. Mar 06, 2021 Microsoft 365 Business will become Microsoft 365 Business Premium. Office 365 Business and Office 365 ProPlus will both become Microsoft 365 Apps. Where necessary we will use the “for business.

Microsoft is adding the P1 license to new subscriptions now and will be rolling it out to existing subscribers in the coming weeks. This is particularly great news for clients grappling with long-term remote work planning.

The features in P1 are designed to facilitate secure access to work applications from anywhere. Microsoft 365 Business Premium plus Azure AD P1 will let you transform your clients’ modern workplace into a work-from-anywhere workplace.

Learn how to resell Microsoft 365 and help your client’s digital transformation with our guide

Expanding the toolset for SMB clients

Microsoft renamed its 365 Business plan to Business Premium when the P1 license was added. This was part of a wider renaming of all their small- and medium-sized business-focused offerings. The Business Premium plan is still intended for SMBs with 300 users or less.

Some of the free Azure AD features were previously available in Microsoft 365 plans, the most important being Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), self-service password resets and conditional access policies. Adding the entire P1 license to Microsoft 365 Business Premium is part of Microsoft’s efforts to help SMBs establish more secure remote work conditions for the current COVID-19 crisis and beyond.

What does Azure AD P1 add to 365 Business Premium?

P1 licenses will give Sherweb partners and their clients access to advanced group, identity and access control policies for more granular control over how users and their devices access cloud resources. Azure AD P1 also offers a few key enterprise-level features we wanted to highlight:

Cloud App Discovery

It was hard to keep track of BYOD devices and consumer cloud app usage even before remote work became the new normal. Now, contending with these security risks is something practically every business faces. This just amplifies the challenge of protecting your client’s cloud infrastructure against data breaches and the unwanted effects of shadow IT.

The Cloud App Discovery tool analyzes your client’s cloud traffic logs. Any activity in their environment coming from a list of over 16,000 different cloud apps is flagged and scored for risk level. You can access reports that measure and rank app usage by traffic volume, number of users, individual user, or number of outbound web requests by app.

This helps you identify and prioritize what data is at risk, what shadow IT systems might have access to your client’s data, and the relative risk those shadow systems pose to your clients’ data integrity.

Application Proxy

Office 365 Business Premium

Businesses that rely on critical on-premise applications have been particularly challenged by the sudden increase in remote workers. Many clients and Sherweb partners have figured out reverse proxy or VPN solutions that are good enough, but the Azure Application Proxy now available with P1 licenses can be a superior choice. It’s a lightweight software agent that gives access to specific on-premise apps without exposing larger segments of a client’s network.

Remote users use their standard Azure single sign-on (SSO) account to access the Application Proxy. This will grant them access to both authorized on-premise apps and their cloud apps, like Teams, SharePoint, other Office apps and Remote Desktop.

Using the Proxy for remote access also mitigates the need to open inbound connections on the client’s firewall. And it’s often more cost effective than a VPN or other proxy setups, as it doesn’t require any local infrastructure or network changes.

Dynamic Groups

Any partner who’s used dynamic groups to manage an enterprise client knows what a time saver they can be. Dynamic AD groups allow you to automatically add and remove users from security groups based on user or device properties (though an Office 365 group can only be a user group).

For example, you can define a “Guest” dynamic group that automatically collects all guest accounts spread around the tenant so you can centrally manage them. Also, any time a user or device attribute changes, Azure AD runs all dynamic group rules and automatically updates membership accordingly.

Password-less authentication

Password fatigue is real. Perhaps you’ve seen an uptick in password-related support requests since people have shifted to working from home. There’s a whole range of personal laptops and mobile devices now trying to authenticate against client resources. Thankfully, the P1 license lets you enable password-less authentication for your client’s cloud apps.

Password-less authentication replaces passwords by performing multi-factor authentication against something users have with them, against information they know, or against biometrics. Azure AD currently supports three different password-less authentication options:

• Windows Hello for Business — Authenticates with biometrics and a PIN tied to a specific PC
• Microsoft Authenticator app — Authenticates sign-ins on a separate, verified mobile device
• FIDO2 security keys — Authenticates with high-security keys stored on a USB thumb drive

An opportunity to deliver more value

Most notable for resellers is that the addition of P1 to Business Premium subscriptions lets you offer more enterprise-grade features to your customers at a lower cost than Office 365 E3 licenses.

Beyond the features listed above, the addition of the P1 license lets you offer your SMB clients many other enterprise-grade features on a Business Premium subscription, such as:

• Customized branding for your clients’ sign-on pages
• Password protection, including access to global and custom banned password lists
• Advanced self-service password reset tools
• MDM auto-enrollment for increased device security
• Many other identity and access control tools

Bring enterprise tools to your SMB clients

The addition of Azure AD Premium P1 to Microsoft 365 Business Premium is definitely welcome news for Sherweb partners looking to offer more value-added services to their clients. It’s great to see Microsoft make these enterprise-grade security tools available to even more organizations.

In particular, we think password-less authentication is a great security feature to implement. It can greatly simplify user authentication while improving security at the same time. And Azure’s Application Proxy is another great tool to support partners pushing the Zero Trust security model.

Don’t forget, Sherweb is available whenever you need a hand with Azure AD setup and implementation. Simply become a partner to get started.

Microsoft 365 for business is a subscription service that lets you runyour organization in the cloud while Microsoft takes care of the IT foryou. Microsoft manages devices, protects against real-world threats, andprovides your organization with the latest in business software. Youcan sign up for a free trial subscription for Microsoft 365 BusinessStandard, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, or Microsoft 365 Apps forbusiness and try it out for 30 days.

Note

You must use a credit card when you sign up for a free trial. At the end of your free trial period, your trial subscription is automatically converted to a paid subscription. Your credit card isn't billed until the end of the trial period.

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Important

Payment options for Office 365 operated by 21Vianet in ChinaInternational credit cards are not accepted. You can pay for your subscription by:

• Invoice
• Online payment using Alipay or China UnionPayProof of payment will be provided in the form of Fapiaos. You can submit your Fapiao request to our Fapiao system about three (3) days after you have paid. For more information, see Apply for a Fapiao for Office 365 operated by 21Vianet.

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Before you begin

You don't need an existing Microsoft account to sign up for a freetrial. For all other procedures in this article, you must be a Global orBilling admin for your organization. For more information, see About admin roles.

Try a free trial subscription

Are you a new customer, and you don't already have an account withMicrosoft? Use these steps to create an account and sign up for a freetrial subscription of Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365Business Premium, or Microsoft 365 Apps for business.

Microsoft Premium

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 Products site.
2. Select the plan that you want to sign up for, such as Microsoft 365 Business Standard, scroll down the page, and select Try free for 1 month.
3. On the next page, follow the steps to set up your account.
4. The signup process may take several minutes to complete. After it's complete, you're ready to start the setup wizard for your subscription. For more information about setting up your subscription, see Next steps.

Buy a subscription from your free trial

O365 Business Premium Mfa

At the end of your free trial period, your trial subscriptionautomatically converts to a paid subscription. The paid subscriptiondefaults to the plan you currently have. You can buy a different plan byfollowing the steps in Buy a different subscription.

If you want to buy your subscription before your trial is over, usethese steps:

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to the Billing > Your products page.
2. On the Your products page, find the subscription that you want to buy.
3. In the Licenses section, select Purchase subscription.
4. Choose either a monthly or annual commitment for your subscription, then select Checkout.
5. On the next page, verify the subscription, and select Checkout.
6. On the next page, verify the Sold to address, the Billed to information, and Items in this order. If you need to make any changes, select Change next to the applicable section.
7. When you're finished, select Accept agreement & place order.

Extend your trial

Do you need more time to try out the features of Microsoft 365 for business before buying? If your trial subscription is within 15 days of expiring and the trial hasn't been extended before then you can extend your trial for another 30 day period. You can only do this one time.

1. In the admin center, go to the Billing > Your products page.
2. On the Products tab, select the trial subscription that you want to extend.
3. On the subscription details page, in the Subscriptions and payment settings section, select Extend end date.
4. In the Extend end date pane, review the extension information, and if necessary, select a payment method. When you're finished, select Extend trial.

Office 365 Business Premium Subscription

When you're ready to buy, see Buy your trial version.

Cancel your free trial subscription

If you decide to cancel your trial subscription before the free trialperiod ends, go to the Microsoft 365 admin center and turn off Recurring billing. The trial will automatically expire when your month ends, and your credit card won't be charged.

Try a different subscription

If you already have a Microsoft 365 for business subscription, you can use the Microsoft 365 admin center to try a different subscription.

When you add a subscription through the Microsoft 365 admin center, the newsubscription is associated with the same organization (domain namespace)as your existing subscription. This association makes it easier to move users inyour organization between subscriptions, or to assign them a license forthe additional products they need.

1. In the admin center, go to the Billing > Purchase services page.
2. On the Purchase services page, you see the plans that are available to your organization. Choose the Microsoft 365 plan that you want to try.
3. On the next page, select Get free trial. The trial gives you 25 user licenses for a one-month term.
4. Choose to receive a text or a call, enter your phone number, then choose Text me or Call me.
5. Enter the verification code, then select Start your free trial.
6. On the Check out page, select Try now.
7. On the order receipt page, select Continue.

Buy a different subscription

If you already have a Microsoft 365 for business subscription, you can go through the Microsoft 365 admin center to buy a different subscription for your organization.

When you buy another subscription through the admin center, the newsubscription is associated with the same organization (domain namespace) as your existing subscription. This makes it easier to move usersin your organization between subscriptions or assign them a license forthe additional subscription they need.

1. In the admin center, go to the Billing > Purchase services page.
2. On the Purchase services page, select the plan that you want to buy, select Details, then select Buy.
3. Enter the number of licenses that you need and choose whether to pay each month or for the whole year. Choose whether you want to automatically assign licenses to everyone who does not currently have a license. Then select Check out now.
4. Review the pricing information and select Next.
5. Provide your payment information, and then select Place order > Go to Admin Home.

Note

You must move users from your free trial subscription to the new subscription before your 90-day grace period ends after your trial subscription expires. By doing this, you keep your data, accounts, and configuration. Otherwise, that information is deleted.

Payment options

You can pay for your subscription by:

• Invoice

• Online payment using Alipay or China UnionPay

O365 Business Premium Vs Standard

Proof of payment will be provided in the form of Fapiaos. You can submit your Fapiao request to our Fapiao system about three (3) days after you have paid. For more information, see Apply for a Fapiao for Office 365 operated by 21Vianet.

Next steps

If you have a new account and are setting up your first subscription,you can use the guided setup articles to help you get started.

If you already have a subscription and are adding a new subscription,you can move users to it. To learn how, see Move users to a different subscription.

Related content

Microsoft 365 for business training videos (trainingvideos)
Add users and assign licenses at the same time (article)
Assign licenses to users (article)
Upgrade to a different plan (article)
Buy or edit an add-on for Microsoft 365 for business (article)
Add storage space for your subscription