Office 365 vs Office 2021

[petben]

Hello, deciding what our upgrade from Office 2019 should be - Office365 or 2021. As far as I can see they are almost identical (?), we already have volume licensing paid annually but 365 seems to be a 'perpetual upgrade' version, so no major reinstalls to worry about ever again. That seems like the best option just based on that?

 

Any thoughts? Our move to OneDrive for user and curriculum folder is imminent if that impacts the decision.

 

 

SIMS STILL doesn't support anything over 2019...why? May have to think about that too...will it affect support calls?

 

Thanks for any ideas.

[Norphy]

The main difference is that Office 365 is going to get new features, whereas Office 2021 is a snapshot of a fairly recent Office 365 build and will not have any additions to it, only bug fixes.

 

Office 365 will track better with new features that Microsoft release in the cloud but Microsoft can and will change the UI of the Windows apps which may upset users. Office 2021 will remain stable in terms of interface but as time goes on, may fall behind when it comes to integration with the online services.

 

Both are patched with the same update mechanism so management is no easier with one over the other.

[mavhc]

Always 365 unless you're a nuclear power station

[jhothersall]

Or a Sims.net customer ... they won't support it.

[robintech]

They do an Office365 update control thing now , not used it myself yet

 

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/top-customer-asked-capabilities-now-available-for-servicing/ba-p/3515933

[paulkerton]

Or a Sims.net customer ... they won't support it.

SIMS holding back schools? As I live and breathe... /s

[chaplic]

SIMS holding back schools? As I live and breathe... /s

 

 

didnt know that but it doesnt weight on my decision one bit, 0% of 0 is still 0

 

the 365 version comes with cloud backed voice-to-text that's pretty good (my son makes use of it), but then if you're not 1:1 on devices you have the PITA of licensing.

[psydii]

I am aware their documented position does not support this, but they'd never dare to enforce that particular clause, it would be suicide.

 

It is probably there to make it completely clear that you need office installed locally to the sims client for sims to work as advertised, and its easier to say "Office 2019", than clarify the difference between Office 365 web apps and Microsoft 365 Apps.

 

Also if a recent 365 Apps update on current or Monthly Enterprise Monthly does break something, you can always move to Monthly Enterprise and roll back to a previous version.

[DrCheese]

Yeah, I don't give a damn what ESS say about Office. If they ever tried to enforce it would blow up in their faces.

 

Besides, it's not difficult to roll 1 or 2 machines back to the LTSC build if needed for testing.

[petben]

Doesn’t 365 do KMS and MAK licensing? Why do you think it’ll be a pain?

[DrCheese]

No you can't do KMS/MAK licensing with Office 365 but we just do shared computer licensing - As long as the user is SSSO'd into Office 365, it just seamlessly licenses them when they logon.

[petben]

Thanks for all the replies, I am leaning towards Office365. As for the SSO licensing requirement I suppose for the odd non-domain laptop we setup for events, loans etc I will have to have a separate 2021 install?

[Noxid_w]

It depends if your staff and students have individual accounts or not. Primary schools often use shared class accounts which I would say warrants Office 2021 to installed on the shared machines. Otherwise, Office 365 is the way to go.

[petben]

I spoke to our licensing people who said as we still have 1 year left on our OVS licensing. Although Office365 would install fine users would be limited to their 5 device limit. Presumably getting error messages on the 6th device. You need the newer EES licensing to have the device based licensing....

[mavhc]

You can set it to save the license file on their home drive so it roams

[petben]

can you elaborate on this please? any links?

Thanks

[mavhc]

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/overview-shared-computer-activation search for Token Roaming

[DrCheese]

I spoke to our licensing people who said as we still have 1 year left on our OVS licensing. Although Office365 would install fine users would be limited to their 5 device limit. Presumably getting error messages on the 6th device. You need the newer EES licensing to have the device based licensing....

 

I never had this problem on OVS licensing, as the shared token expires after a certain amount of time. Unless you have students swapping computers every 5 seconds it's not an issue (Or at least, it wasn't for us)