[RKDinOKC]

Just curious of what you guys think.

Company is giving everyone in the company and email account with web Outlook. There are about 300 employees that currently do not have email because they don't need it to do their job. The email account is so they can access their training, HR documentation, notices, and wellness info. All of the companies on-line documents are PDF. The are putting in several Kiosks with limited web access for these employees to access their info.

There are 3 licenses are being consideration for these employees.
None of them allow access to email with Outlook. All have active sync for phones.

Kiosk, $2/mo is a web email only account.
K1, $4/mo above with web Office apps.
Business Essentials, $5/mo above with ability to access shared inboxes/calendars etc.

Currently we have 3 licenses we are using...
All allow access with Outlook and have active sync.

Exchange Online, $4/mo web email and access to shared inboxes/calendars etc.
E1, $8 same as above with web Office apps and online archiving.
E3, $20 same as above with desktop Word/Excel/Powerpoint.

Most of our current users have boxed copies of Microsoft Office.

We have 125 with Exchange online with 15 using web mail (don't have boxed copies of office) and 250 users with E3 and only 119 of them have installed Office from their on-line iicense.

IT Director wants to get 300 K1 licenses for the employees to access the company because most of our current users have boxed office.

I disagree. In my opinion sharing would be more important so they could join shared mailboxes and access shared calendars, meeting rooms, etc. So I would go with Business Essentials for $1 more. If trying to save money get more Exchange Online licenses without the Office apps since all the company documents are PDF. For the same $4 of K1.


What do you think?

I know the IT director wants to get rid of all of boxed office copies, but at $20/mo per employee that would be very expensive considering a lot of our users have Office 2007 or Office 2010. They would be buying a new copy of Office every year. Microsoft is not doing it like Adobe. Abobe's monthly software subscriptions cost the same as their upgrade prices were to keep current instead of new copy purchases.