MS365 A3 Or the cheaper A1 + EMS A3?

[Space_Munkey]

Hi All,

 

Seen a lot of discussion over the past year in regards to A3 licensing and converations more recently about A1 + Enterprise Mobility & Security A3..

 

Our school has been hit by redundancies and we just lost our network manager who was adamant on MS365 A3 licensing.

 

I've been crunching numbers and researching our licensing situation and am now looking to propose to the school we go for A1 + EMS A3 as it provides essentially the same functionality (that we actually need currently) for around £8000 less a year.

 

As far as I can see, we will retain the following:

• Conditional Access
• InTune
• Microsoft Defender
• 1:40 Student use benefit (EMS A3)
• 365 Apps for enterprise (although due to examination accounts having no internet access and Office 2024 having basically the exact same functionality, I'm opting to not deploy this... Maybe for staff, but not student devices).

 

We get our office and windows upgrade licensing via OVS: Microsoft - DsktpEdu ALNG LicSAPk OLV F 1Y Acdmc Ent which allows us to buy barebones devices and license via KMS.

 

EMS A3 is OVS based licensing, so this move would also bring everything under one agreement

 

Is there anything I'm missing with this setup? I have a call with our licensing provider tomorrow who will fill in the details, but wanted to see what the view was here.

 

Cheers,

 

[Rob_D]

It would be interesting to see how it works out if you factor in not needing the OVS Office licenses with the A3 (although I imagine your plan would still work out cheaper).

[robyholmes]

We're on the A1 + EMS A3 Add-on. Just watch your storage usage (100GB on 1A compared to 1TB on A3). It works for us but Microsoft do seem to be releasing new features to A3 only, not A1.

[Space_Munkey]

2 hours ago, Rob_D said:

It would be interesting to see how it works out if you factor in not needing the OVS Office licenses with the A3 (although I imagine your plan would still work out cheaper).

 

The issue is that we buy in laptops without a windows image. We then build them with our own image and license via KMS. This is not doable via A3 alone and would require devices to be autopiloted OOB etc, which I personally just don't believe is right for our school right now. Especially since we have spent the last couple of years refining and configuring out SCCM/MECM server (it all works flawlessly now).

 

1 hour ago, robyholmes said:

We're on the A1 + EMS A3 Add-on. Just watch your storage usage (100GB on 1A compared to 1TB on A3). It works for us but Microsoft do seem to be releasing new features to A3 only, not A1.

 

I have kept this in mind.. Realistically 100Gb per user is way more than they will ever need. We've kept staff locked down to 2Gb of network storage since 2018 and there's a few that complain here and there, but overall most manage with that and OneDrive. I am personally aware of only 2 people that got anywhere near the 100Gb limit and one of them was using it for their personal data!

 

Plus with everything then moved into the cloud, we would need to look at backing up that data back to site, which would include £4000 of veeam licensing and ~£1000 for a NAS.

 

I think even if we decide that we do want to do that, it still works out cheaper via the A1 + EMS A3 route.

[localzuk]

You say the laptops come without a windows image, do you still get them with a Windows license though? As they have to be licensed properly up front.

 

Here, we use full A3 for those that need it, and Office A1 for those that don't (cleaners, MDSAs etc...). And then a handful of A5 licenses for the IT team.

[Rob_D]

18 minutes ago, Space_Munkey said:

The issue is that we buy in laptops without a windows image. We then build them with our own image and license via KMS. This is not doable via A3 alone and would require devices to be autopiloted OOB etc

We put out own image on all new devices, but the Office install is licensed through our A3 (and AFAIK you can't license desktop office apps with an A1 anymore). As I said, interesting to know from my point of view, but perhaps not overly relevant for you.

 

[Space_Munkey]

 

43 minutes ago, localzuk said:

You say the laptops come without a windows image, do you still get them with a Windows license though? As they have to be licensed properly up front.

 

Here, we use full A3 for those that need it, and Office A1 for those that don't (cleaners, MDSAs etc...). And then a handful of A5 licenses for the IT team.

 

Our licensing guy told the recently departed Network Manager, that: we cannot do away with OVS completely in our current setup, due to the method we undertake (of buying unimaged laptops and then imaging them with our own image). The desktop licensing "DsktpEdu ALNG LicSAPk OLV F 1Y Acdmc Ent" is what I understand allows us to do that and removes the need for the devices to come with a windows license OOB.

 

34 minutes ago, Rob_D said:

We put out own image on all new devices, but the Office install is licensed through our A3 (and AFAIK you can't license desktop office apps with an A1 anymore). As I said, interesting to know from my point of view, but perhaps not overly relevant for you.

 

 

So after a weekend spent partially gaming, partially researching this topic for my meeting with SLT on thursday, what I could gather is that it is in fact the OVS-ES "DsktpEdu ALNG LicSAPk OLV F 1Y Acdmc Ent" that gives access to 365 Apps for Enterprise (desktop versions not just web).

 

With all this said and done, knowing my luck I'll be back here tomorrow after my meeting with the licensing bloke with my tail between my legs with an explenation as to how and where I was completely and utterly wrong 😂

 

[DavR]

We used to do our Windows desktop and Office licensing through the same method, the "DsktpEdu ALNG LicSAPk OLV F 1Y Acdmc Ent" product you mention through OVS. I was always told that this licensed your desktop user with everything they'd need - Windows OS, Office Pro Plus, and server CALs. So yes, using this, you should be licensed for Office 365 Desktop Apps, or, MAK/KMS deployment if you prefer. We make use of both - KMS licensing for Office, but also, Office 365 Desktop Apps licenses for staff, to allow them to install Office at home.

 

As an aside, a while back we reassessed what we were using and got rid of the above product, in favour of buying Windows (Edu/Ent upgrade only), Office and CALs as separate items and saved a lot of money. But we were mostly getting our kit delivered with base Windows OS, so you probably wouldn't make the same savings.

 

Interesting to see there are others out there still using OVS, though. I remember going to a Microsoft event maybe five or more years ago, confidently predicting the end of OVS and M365 being the only route 😂 We've consistently been told otherwise by our licensing guys. We're OVS + P1 + InTune at the moment (and have always been told this is cheaper for us than buying full blown M365 A3 licensing), might be interesting to see how OVS + EMS A3 compares at next renewal. 

 

 

[Space_Munkey]

So after a good chat with our licensing guy last week, it does seem that buying the packages individually is actually considerably cheaper that buying M365 A3.

 

A1 = (Free for Educational institutions - 100TB pooled storage, Exchange P1, SharePoint P1, OneDrive for business P1 etc)

EMS A3 x 200(1:15) = ~£1800 (Entra ID P1, InTune P1)

 

If we want to keep the increases in storage limits (keep in mind here, it's literally only the limits, the extra pooled storage gained per user from A3 is not very significant with MS-A3 ( (50Gb per user, so pooled storage = 100Tb -> 107Tb for 200 licenses), for SharePoint, Exchange and OneDrive, we have the option to add:

 

Office A3 x 200(1:40) = ~£2300

 

Obviously MS-A3 may work out better for some depending on how you're building / deploying devices, but for us this is realistically what makes the most sense and saves ££££'s

[DavR]

Thanks for sharing that pricing @Space_Munkey, that's really useful.

 

We're currently utilising the free A1, plus Entra ID P1 @ about £6 per license. I'm currently playing around with InTune, and although I would only need it for a subset of our users, it looks like it wouldn't cost us that much more to give everyone EMS A3 @ £9 per license instead, covering both add-on products. 

 

Useful to bear in mind for our next renewal.

[Space_Munkey]

I think we could probably go for the A1 + Entra ID P1 too, but we're in a similar situation whereby we have just started somewhat utlising InTune and actually, I think it would be a shame to go without it at this point as it's solved a lot of MDM issues we were beginning to have with mobile phones.

 

Also if it helps anyone else - In my original post i spoke about Defender. Defender does not come including in EMS A3 like I initially thought. But anybody is wanting to opt for that, licensing is around £5/user for P1 and is a 1:5 for devices. Apparently it works on a kind of honor system, so as long as you have enough licenses to cover your devices, you should be OK. (200 licenses = 1000 devices)

 

This won't cover servers and Defender for Business is necessary afaik - I don't have pricing for this though as I've opted to just stick with our currently solution for a bit longer as it works out, again, much cheaper.

[Edu-IT]

On 28/04/2025 at 14:17, Space_Munkey said:

So after a good chat with our licensing guy last week, it does seem that buying the packages individually is actually considerably cheaper that buying M365 A3.

 

A1 = (Free for Educational institutions - 100TB pooled storage, Exchange P1, SharePoint P1, OneDrive for business P1 etc)

EMS A3 x 200(1:15) = ~£1800 (Entra ID P1, InTune P1)

 

If we want to keep the increases in storage limits (keep in mind here, it's literally only the limits, the extra pooled storage gained per user from A3 is not very significant with MS-A3 ( (50Gb per user, so pooled storage = 100Tb -> 107Tb for 200 licenses), for SharePoint, Exchange and OneDrive, we have the option to add:

 

Office A3 x 200(1:40) = ~£2300

 

Obviously MS-A3 may work out better for some depending on how you're building / deploying devices, but for us this is realistically what makes the most sense and saves ££££'s

So EMS A3 is £9 per year per user?

[Space_Munkey]

Yup!

 

With a 1:15 Student use benefit (so 200 x EMS A3 = 3000 student licenses)

[KK20]

speak to john at veryPC.  He is good at finding individual components.  This can make things as cheap as they can get for what you need.  We are on OVS with individual components because it suits us.  We dont have 75 knowledge workers so chest is not cheaper (when I last priced it), M365 was more expensive - not all vendors work with chest if you wish to go down the EES route.    We dont have an onsite exchange, SCCM so its windows upgrade, cals, office + free 365apps uplift, a couple of DC 16packs and an  STD server 16 packs (16 packs cheaper than bundling 2 packs for our server cores), P1's for intune and P1 entra/identity

 

remember that not all MS products give faculty:student ratios and need to be licensed per user.

 

reading your knowledge worker count at 200 I would also price chest EES as this may be cheaper depending on how you endpoint license.