When COVID-19 became a pandemic and a lot of the global workforce was forced to work from home, Microsoft announced a 6 month free of charge Microsoft Teams subscription for businesses worldwide. We are now three months ahead, which leaves you with three more months to decide on your next step. Here is some food for thoughts.
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Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a cloud based collaboration and communication platform, intended to boost productivity and security for people working together in teams. The six months free of charge subscription for Microsoft Teams was announced and available as of March 5th.
It does end
When you are using the ‘COVID-19 Teams subscription’, this will automatically end 6 months after your organization started the subscription. So if you started early, let’s say March 10th, your subscription ends September 10th. This seems far away, but summer is calling and people will want some time off. This means, the six months are over before you know it …
The options
You have to decide what you want to do when your trial subscription ends and the options are limited:
- Do nothing, subscription ends automatically
- Continue the subscription with a paid subscription
- Love the way of work, but move to a competitor
When you go for option 1), please make sure that you secure all data and documents currently stored in Teams, because they will disappear with the subscription.
Whatever option you choose, you have to consult your employees, staff, IT department, investigate transition scenario’s, decide on subscriptions, work on adoption and so on. Might you want help with that, please let us know.
Microsoft 365
When you want to keep using Microsoft Teams as your preferred cloud collaboration solution you don’t necessarily need a paid subscription. A lot of the Teams functionality is available in the ‘all time’ free subscription (until Microsoft ends it …). However, in your current COVID-19 free subscription you might just have enabled features, like recording of video calls or managing user and apps, that require a paid subscription. What subscription suits your needs depends on your type of business, business goals, IT maturity level and how your teams work together. Might you want some help figuring this out? Please drop us a message.
Doing nothing is not an option
When your organization is currently relying on the free Microsoft COVID-19 Teams solution for collaboration and communication, doing nothing is not an option. Even when you don’t want to move forward with the platform, you need to plan your divorce and you can use some help with that. Please do contact us for a tailor made offer.