Making Microsoft 365 licensing fit the work

Different jobs, similar licence allocations

A review of the manufacturing organisation’s Microsoft licensing found that many people held E3 licences, despite using very different parts of the service. Some shop-floor machinists and CNC technicians mainly needed to check email through a browser on shared computers.

Other teams, including business development and operations, had broader requirements. The organisation also wanted better visibility of identity risks and cloud-app use as staff and devices moved between locations.

Allocate licences around the work people do

We moved selected frontline staff to F3 licences, retaining the browser-based access they needed for their work. E5 licences were allocated to other users where the additional capabilities supported the organisation’s requirements.

Reducing the cost of the frontline allocations helped offset the higher cost of E5 elsewhere. Arviteni recalls that overall licence spending stayed broadly similar, while the business gained capabilities it had not previously been using.

The result depended on this organisation’s mix of roles and requirements. It was a review of the actual allocation, rather than a single licence choice applied to everyone.

Turn the licence changes into useful controls

The work drew on Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 2, Defender for Cloud Apps and Defender for Identity, alongside Microsoft Entra identity-risk information and Conditional Access policies.

Identity risks became clearer to the IT team, and access policies could take those risk signals into account. Cloud-app visibility helped the team understand which services people were using and consider where company information might be handled.

The purpose was to put the additional capabilities to work in the environment. Assigning a licence was only part of that change; the policies and configuration made the capabilities useful.

Build visibility around people working across sites

The organisation’s existing monitoring arrangements were focused on its premises. It needed a clearer picture as staff used devices at other sites and on networks away from the office.

That requirement helped shape the choice of capabilities. The business wanted its approach to identity and cloud services to reflect how people were actually working, including when they were travelling.

More useful capability from the licence budget

Frontline staff retained the access needed for their day-to-day tasks. Other teams received licences that supported broader requirements, while IT gained more useful security and governance capabilities.

The outcome was a better fit between licence spending, staff needs and the organisation’s security priorities. Reviewing what people actually used created room to improve other parts of the environment.