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Office 365 Business Plans and on-premise Server access

Lately there is a lot of confusion on the so called CAL Equivalent for Microsoft Office 365 Business Plans. The question here is: ‘Do I as a subscriber to Office 365 Business plans have the right to access an Exchange, Skype for Business and SharePoint Server and with that have no need for the corresponding Exchange, Skype for Business and SharePoint client access licenses?’

The confusion
The confusion lays in the part where the Office 365 Administrative Portal shows that (as an example) Exchange Online Plan 1 is part of Office 365 Business Premium. When you chat with Microsoft Office 365 commercial support they will tell you that Exchange Online Plan 1 is part of the Business Plans (see screenshot).
Where Exchange Online Plan 1 has a CAL Equivalent for Exchange Server CAL, subscribers to Exchange Online Plan 1 do not need an Exchange Server CAL (user) for accessing and using an Exchange Server. However, subscribers to Office 365 Business Premium will get all the technical ‘stuff’ which comes with Exchange Online Plan 1, they still subscribe to O365 BP and not Exchange Online as a separate plan.

The legal base
To find out what equivalent rights users of the software have, we have to look at the legal documents. There is some signed Agreement active between Microsoft and the user of the technology (Cloud Agreement, Open Volume Agreement and/or Enterprise Agreement). Within those agreements is stated that the Product Terms determine the use rights for software products and are part of the agreement. This is the legal base. When we take a look at the Product Terms, Appendix A, CAL/ML Equivalent Licenses we see that Office 365 Business Premium and Office 365 Business Essentials are not listed. Since all the use rights are described in the legal Microsoft documents means that what is not describe does not give you the right to do.

Conclusion
Office 365 Business Plans do not give the subscriber the right to access and use on-premise Exchange, Skype for Business and/or SharePoint servers.

What to do?
Customers who have a need for hybrid scenario’s for Exchange, Skype for Business and/or SharePoint should either move to one of the corresponding Office 365 Enterprise Plans or buy the corresponding traditional client access licenses for their users.

Need advice?
Are you unsure whether you are using your cloud subscriptions in the correct way for hybrid cloud scenario’s? Please contact us for help.

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