HITT- Microsoft Teams Decoupled from M365-O365, April 16, 2024

Transcript

We kick things off today with high intensity tech training. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced it was splitting up the Teams and Office apps worldwide, which has led to many questions from existing and prospective users. Today, we take a look at this news, discuss its impacts, and the opportunities this offers Telarus advisors to assist clients in dealing with these developments.

Telarus director of CEC and UC Solutions, Megan Tai, is here joined by Telarus UC and CC solution architect, Michael Bayarjan.

Megan and Mikey b, welcome to the call. Always great to have you here. Microsoft certainly made some waves this month, didn’t they?

They did. Thank you, Doug.

We’re excited. Mikey b. My counterpart and I, Mikey B, we are very, very excited to to talk to everyone about this today. We’re gonna talk about what’s changing, why it’s changing, the impact it could have on Microsoft, on your customers, on UCaaS in general. You know, Microsoft likes to do a lot of things to shake things up. Speaking of shaking things up, Mikey, what’s shaking?

Hey. Did you feel that earthquake from a couple weeks ago? No. Not the one in New Jersey and New York, but from Microsoft.

They, due to impending antitrust legislation, they decided to break up, Teams from the office and Microsoft three sixty five licenses. It started in Europe. Right? Europe was the first one. The EU, they sued Microsoft, and they had to unbundle now for about six months. And then Microsoft decided, well, what’s good for the EU is good for the globe, and they really kind of, had to had to kinda break things up.

Show of hands that neither Megan and I can see, how many people remember the Internet Explorer versus Netscape, antitrust suit from, like, the nineties. This feels very similar, right, where Microsoft was bundling in Teams, which was a collaboration piece, which led to unfair competition versus Zoom and Google and all the other, you know, Vonage and Dialpad and and GoTo, meeting spaces. So this was very similar.

But, Megan, do you think it’s gonna slow down the adoption of Teams voice? We’re on a bullet train as of March.

We are.

Megan, how many customers a week do you talk to? And and out of the those, how many of they actually talk about Microsoft Teams voice?

Oh, I would say nine out of ten. I think on those calls where we talk to a customer where they don’t want to talk about Teams, it’s surprising to me, really. The adoption has been huge. Right? It’s just in every conversation.

So Do I So you don’t think it’s gotta slow down to level.

Is that what you’re saying?

I I think it might slow things down a little bit. I think it’s it’s a little bit early to tell, but I I think it’ll slow down a little bit. I think that it’s now gonna give customers options, and they’re gonna think a lot harder about it. Like, I’ve got a customer right now.

They’re actually moving to Teams or thinking about moving to, on prem I’m sorry, cloud, Microsoft in general. They’re on on prem Exchange. So they’re really starting to think now. Now they have more options.

Right? So it’s it’s a lot of thinking. I think, sergeant I think things will slow down a little bit and be steady, a little steadier, but I think the adoption will continue to happen.

So what you’re saying is the train has left the station.

Totally left the station. Yes.

So what happened exactly? Right?

What what’s happened was they’ve taken the Teams application and now put it outside of the office in the Microsoft traditional bundle. So now it is a one it is a one hundred percent a la carte option, and there’s some qualifiers to that.

So, Megan, what if I’m an existing customer? Does that mean I have to now kinda pay for my team’s licensing?

No. So it shouldn’t impact existing customers until you go to renew the contract. At that time, then you have the option to either decouple it yourself or continue on the same path. Who knows that? That might change. Right? But as of right now, existing customers is not gonna be impacted from what we understand.

Yeah. Yep. You know, like all companies, you know, how show of hands out there. How many people, went, saw Kobe’s amazing, webinar about, VMware.

Right? This feels very similar to that. Right? Right? Broadcom bought VMware and through the whole channel in a in a frenzy.

And now Microsoft is sort of doing this, and it’s kinda sending a lot of customers in the frenzy. Yes. If you have licenses today, as of today, there is, no reason to worry that you have to rebuy Teams licensing. However, Microsoft is always looking for ways to grow revenue and when this be an easy transition for them.

So stay tuned.

What else we got?

The Microsoft Teams adoption is just off the charts. We’re not gonna spend too many times on, too much time on statistics or anything like that. But just know that folks who do lead on Teams meetings will be looking at Teams phones.

Here’s a great stat for everyone. Let’s assume there’s three hundred million three hundred million paid Teams accounts today, only about ten to twelve percent have turned on the phone option.

So there is a massive amount of Teams customers out there who likely will be at least looking for that Teams voice option going forward.

So, Megan, help me understand, again, what this really means to, our tech advisers clients, kinda going forward.

Yeah. Going forward. So this is going to impact new customers who are looking to purchase the enterprise suites, the e one, e three, e fives. Right?

Going forward, now they have to get two SKUs. It’s completely unbundled. You do not have an option to get the enterprise license with Teams included. You have to buy them separately.

So by default, you’re getting them without the Teams SKU, and then you can add it on for five dollars and twenty five cents per user. So Vinnie had asked a question about reducing the price. Yeah. Well, we’ve got another chart we’re gonna show you in a in the near future here.

But, overall, I think it’s gonna increase a bit. Okay? So you the customer’s gonna have to do the math and figure out what makes more sense for them, what do they really need. So this is as it stands.

You have to get two licenses if you want e one, e three, or e five, and you want Teams. Okay? So So just keep that in mind. That’s that’s the biggest change right here.

And that’s for new New customer.

So this is someone transitioning from Google Workspaces to Microsoft. This is a net new company, a start up company.

This might be a company upgrading from business premium to e one, e three, e five. Is that is that fair to say, Megan?

That’s fair to say. That’s right.

Alright. Good. Alright. I got one right today. Remember, new customers.

New customers.

Okay. Frontline. I’ve not really heard of Frontline before. What what what’s a Frontline license?

Yeah. Frontline to me are more of the, like, the back office workers we always talk about. Right?

So they’re they could be in manufacturing, warehouses, not a lot of usage and whatnot. So those, historically, has been a lower cost license.

So with frontline, all customers, you can continue to buy it bundled with Teams. That still exists. Or new customers, you can opt to buy it without Teams.

So there’s a little bit of a difference there in pricing. But the gotcha is if you buy it without Teams, if later on you wanna add Teams, it’s five dollars and twenty five cents. So it it it dramatically increases the price, right, from from the right side to the from the left side.

Well, that’s very So that’s something I have to think about.

That’s tricky. That’s some inside baseball. Thank you, Megan, for, for letting me know about that. I I didn’t know that one.

But we have a little graphic, at the bottom here. It talks about the front line, but you can see kind of a staff that really, really don’t focus on productivity. They don’t need the productivity tools. They just need basic, basic tools.

Okay.

Business licenses. I I think, Megan, many of our, tech advisers have customers that fall in that three hundred user three hundred employees or less that qualify for the business accounts.

This looks a little different than enterprise.

It does. But so, again, if you if you are you’ve won a Microsoft three sixty five business license, you can still get it with Teams. So I I see some questions popping up. Yeah.

There so on the left side, those are the SKUs that are still bundled with Teams. The only thing that’s changed is the enterprise licenses. The e licenses are no longer bundled. But you’ve got your business, licenses are bundled.

Your frontline business, licenses are bundled still. So now you have the option of buying it bundled or not bundled.

Can I mix and match?

Can I You can mix and match? Yeah. I think that’s the beauty of it now moving forward. So there’s more flexibility as well. So you could pick and choose within your organization who needs what and kind of place it together. It’s I think it’s just gonna force the customers to really, really think about their business objective and how their users are gonna be using the, the licenses.

K. So there are still so I see a bunch of questions coming in. There are still SKUs with Teams bundled in, and you’re gonna see that on the left side.

But they they’re also now providing, options to purchase it without the Teams license. Again, the only one that they’re forcing to separate the two are the e licenses, the e one, e three, and e five.

And, Megan, not to be that broken record, but this is only for new customers.

New customers, yes, have the option to buy it without. Okay?

Or upon or or upon, subscription renewal.

That’s right. Okay. That’s right.

Alright. Okay. So are there anybody is there anyone non impacted?

Yes. Thankfully. By this. Thankfully. So we need government entities, the nonprofit customers, the educational sector, the a academic, the a one, a three licenses and whatnot, and then, of course, your residential consumers.

These folks are not impacted.

Everything is business as usual. Not that’s not to say it may change in the may change in the future. Right? We don’t know. But as of now, these customers are not impacted.

Yeah. And so for our tech advisers, we don’t do a lot of business with the US government, and, obviously, consumers are consumers. So it’s really those middle two. I know a lot of our tech advisers work with a ton of nonprofits. I have calls all the time with nonprofits, and we’re making a lot of, motion in that k through twelve space, but now we’re going upmarket into the higher ed.

I’m working three or four university deals right now as we speak. So this will, this this is great for them who are looking at teams, which they all are, that that that they’re not gonna be impacted on this. Fantastic.

Okay. So here here we go.

For those of you who are scratching your head and saying, this team’s voice thing, how do I make money on it, and how do I sell it, and who sells it, and who does a good job, and what do I do? I thought it’d be important to go through the four ways that a customer can procure a team’s voice.

The first way is you can go direct to Microsoft.

Megan, how much permission do I make if my customer goes direct to Microsoft?

Mikey, I’m not really good with math. But if I think about it, I think it’s something like zero.

Oh my gosh. Zero. So if you wanna go out there and tell your customers, Team’s voice is awesome. They should go right to Microsoft.

Go for it. But just know you don’t get paid on that. Yeah. More importantly, be beyond that, there are some definite issues about going direct with Microsoft. There’s no redundancy. The customer has to do all the, porting. They have to create the PBX.

They have to go through Microsoft for support. Thank you for calling. Your estimated wait time is three days, four hours. Right? So it’s just not a great experience.

What we’ve seen is customers will do, like, a POC direct with Microsoft. Let’s just see what this thing is really like. Let’s see how it works. And then once they figure out, okay. This is what I want, but I don’t wanna do it through Microsoft. Let’s figure out how else to do it.

So, Megan, what’s, first of all, tech advisers, do not Google native direct routing. It’s not a thing. It’s something that Megan and I made up to separate it from the UCaaS direct routing, which you’ll see next. So what do we mean by when we say native direct routing?

Native direct routing, you live and breathe in the Microsoft Teams interface, period. You don’t wanna see any other softphones. Everything is fully integrated. You’re dialing and receiving calls from the the Teams interface.

And, usually, we go to what the our vendors who are Microsoft gold partners. Right? They know the environment really, really well. They’ve been integrated with Microsoft forever.

So it is just I think that’s why we call it native. Right? You you don’t know any better. You’re using Teams for your call, and you have no idea who’s on the back end providing the dial tone.

Yep. The other thing about the Nave direct routing is they they tend to be high touch. So if you if you have a customer that says this, hey, Megan. You know us. We have, like, a hundred employees, the IT team is me and my teenage daughter.

We’ve been told that we need to go to Team’s voice, and we’re kinda scared about that. We need someone really to hold our hand. That’s where these gold partners really help. They can they can really be that extension of the IT team.

Alright. What about our friends in the traditional UCaaS, portfolio?

Are they a good fit?

They are. They’re really good fit, really good option. They also do direct routing, which I think if you look at the interface, it it looks like Microsoft Teams. That’s one option.

The other option is they could do, like, a an embedded dialer, right, where you don’t have to upgrade to that Microsoft phone with standard license, so there’s no additional cost for that.

I like I like the native direct routing and the UCaaS direct routing options because these vendors can bring in things like SMS, integrations to contact center, eFax, analog support. These are things that if you go with Microsoft directly, they can’t support.

But it is supported through native direct routing or UCaaS direct routing vendors.

Yeah. Hey, Megan, there’s a bullet point here that says something about may not require Microsoft phone license. Yeah. For the last twenty minutes, we’ve been telling our tech advisers they have to buy the Microsoft phone license. So are we fibbing here, or what what what’s going on with this?

No. They so the Microsoft phone license is at eight dollar add on. Right? It retails for eight dollars. That’s what gives you the dial tone to work with Teams.

Or I should no. I should back up. I give you the vehicle to bring in dial tone to work with Teams.

Or or what we call the calling plan. Right? You’ll see that term calling plan.

Right. Right. So, in the cases where you do not need that additional add on is when these vendors can do an embedded or a plug in dialer. So you’ve got the Microsoft Teams interface, but they’ve got their own application embedded in. So now you’re looking at Teams and you’re looking at their application. It can it can either be really smooth or it can be confusing to a customer. So we we let them we talk through that and guide them through that process and see what they decide.

Basically, bring you and me in to talk about the process, doctor.

That’s right.

Alright. The last one is, relatively new couple years now. And, honestly, when it first came out, I didn’t really understand it. Now Megan’s much smarter than I am, so she’s wicked smart if you’re up here from the Boston area. So she kinda had to had to explain the benefit to to me, but now I’m sort of all in with the operator connect.

So, Megan, operator connect and direct routing, actually super similar from an architecture point of view. So what what’s a couple of the not so subtle differences?

Mhmm. I think the the biggest difference is with direct routing, you can have access to additional features. With operator connect, you’re really at the mercy of the limitations of the Microsoft Teams interface. So it’s operator connect is for those customers who are super simple and basic. They don’t need a lot of bells and whistles. They’re just looking for the dial tone, right, a carrier on the back end.

And then another big differentiator is operator connect, will typically provide some sort of a an admin portal that’s super easy to use so that customers can manage the IDs and make changes on the fly without having to access Microsoft’s PowerShell.

So it’s it’s quite attractive for customers. But you’re right. Very similar in architecture. Direct routing, operator connect, these vendors will do everything for you. They’ll host SBCs for you. You don’t have to worry about that. But there are just a little bit of differences in the features and the accessibility.

Yeah. With OperatorConnect, a couple of the, deal that that I’ve been lucky enough to, to work on with our tech advisers. Operate Connect, customers tend to be a little larger. They have an IT team.

They’re they’re very fluent in Microsoft Teams admin portal because, unlike the direct routing with direct routing, there’s, like, two big admin portals. The Teams admin portal, but also the traditional admin portal from our UCaaS vendors or our native direct, vendors. So it definitely too with Operate Connect, it really cuts that down to one and a half.

The portal from the Operate Connect vendor is really just a storage point for DIDs.

And then once once you have a a new employee, you can pull that DID over into the Teams admin portal. The other thing about Operate Connect is because they’re a certified vendor, when your customer opens a ticket, hey. I’m having an issue with the operator connect supplier.

That operator connect supplier also opens a ticket with Microsoft because the customer has an SLA with the operator connect, vendor, but then the operator connect vendor has an SLA with Microsoft. So one ticket one ticket equals two teams working on that. So, again, like I said, for bigger customers, Operate Connect, tends to be one a little less expensive, but also, a little better with the global scope.

But what do you have circled in red here?

What’s that Oh, much register.

Well, we’ve registered all deals. So here’s here’s the deal.

I am Maureen. I live in New Jersey. My customers love me. Hi, Maureen.

And, I tell my customer, you know, you should go operator connect. You’re a thousand users. You’re global in scope. Operators connect is great. What’s great is they have this marketplace and, it’s so easy to find one.

You know, I can help you do that. Go operate connect. So the customer says, marketplace, so easy to find one. So they go to the marketplace. They they choose an operator connect partner, and they say, yeah. I wanna go with you. They sign the contract.

Megan, how much commission did Maureen just make?

It’s that bad math commission. Zero.

Zero. Right? Yeah. Because they chose Call Tower or Fusion or BCM one and may and, Maureen didn’t register.

So before you tell your customer, oh my god. It’s awesome. Go to the marketplace. You’ll love it.

Say this.

You know what’s interesting about Operate Connect is these are certified partners. And, yeah, there is a directory with about sixty certified, but we do business with most of those. And I know who’s doing it really well. I know who’s okay at it, and I know who’s not doing it at all, who their installations are terrible and their support is terrible.

It’d be best if you and I work together on this, and I’ll find you the best one. Right? So you put that fear and certainly doubt into your customer of like, oh, if I do it myself and I pick the wrong one, that won’t look good on me. Maureen, tell me who’s doing it really well.

Okay? So you have to register and just don’t throw it out there. Just go to the Operate Connect website. It’s fantastic.

K? Yeah. And to Eric’s question there, yeah, so if we registered, it’s it’s done properly, and we will get comped on it.

One hundred percent. No problem. No problem. Okay. Megan, this is, this is the, the, TMZ section of, our recording today.

Rumor mill, real or not real. First one, Teams’ e licenses include the phone license. True or false?

Oh, that’s a big no.

It’s a big no.

Yeah. Only the e five. Right? So, if you have the e five, that does include the phone license.

But, the only e five customers are typically large enterprises because of the cost. So if you’re here in the US, it’s eight bucks. Our friends to our north, ten twenty. Our friends across the the pond, six, six sixty, and our friends down under, twelve dollars.

It’s the same license. It’s just a different price point to activate that. K? Now do you always need that phone license, Megan?

We we just wanna hit this one on our own.

No. Yeah. You not always. It just depends. Right? It depends.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And we talk about this right about the embedded dialer.

So Yeah.

We It’s a different experience, and it pros and cons for sure.

Yep. Yeah. Talk with us through that. Again, we’ll we’ll talk through the pros and cons and and educate your your customers about how it’s done. Give them options.

Mhmm. But if you go native or you go operator connect, you have to have to have it. If you go UCaaS, some need it, some don’t. Check-in with us. Yep. We got you covered.

Megan. Mhmm. The sky is falling. I am Chicken Little.

Prices are skyrocketing.

True or false?

Dep depends on who you ask.

You know? So I had a a partner come to me immediately and said, I heard it’s gonna increase thirty percent, Period. I’m like, well, no. Not necessarily.

It it will impact, like, the f the f one, the f three licenses. I think that’s where we’re gonna see the biggest increase. So here, the question about pricing. Right?

So we’ve got old pricing where it’s bundled with Teams.

We’ve got new pricing where it’s unbundled.

And then the add on. Right? Five twenty five for Teams. And then here’s the combined and and you can see here.

I think on average, it’s gonna increase a few dollars, But that can add up. If you got a thousand employees, that can add up really fast. So it really just depends on what your business needs and and how you’re gonna, look at the pricing and the ROI around it. But, it it’s gonna impact some quite a bit for sure.

Another is it is just minor.

Broken record time again, Megan. This is for new customers only. Correct?

New team’s pricing for you. Again, remember, it affects the e e licenses. That’s where you’re gonna see the impact because you’re you’re forced to buy two SKUs now. I think overall, though I mean, existing customers, you can still buy the under the frontline suites in the Microsoft three sixty five suite, you can still buy it bundled.

You also have the option of unbundling. But if you add it back in, it’s gonna cost a lot more.

Yeah. So this is for new customers. And when you renew, you you’ll get the option to bundle or unbundle or do whatever you need to do to to right size your account.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Alright. Now, Megan, Microsoft, the behemoth, I can only buy the required Microsoft licenses through Microsoft Direct. Hey, customer. Just you just go I know you want Team Voice. We’re gonna do a direct routing partner for that. We’re gonna do operator connect. But for all the licenses you need, you just go to Microsoft Direct because I I don’t want any of that any of that, heartache headache.

Big. Trip. No. That’s not true. Oh. Not true.

I did not know. Covered.

Yeah. We have options. We have options. But what’s the caveat, Mikey?

Some pay, some don’t pay. These are all awesome companies. Don’t get us wrong. And listen. It’s an eight dollar license. Your commission on an eight dollar license is like, you know, a dollar.

So but you sell a thousand of them, it’s like a thousand dollars. Right? So please, please, please check-in with these providers, see what the compensation looks like, check-in with your regional SE and who’s doing it well as well. Wouldn’t it be nice if I if I sold a deal with Teligent IP and I can get the their native direct routing partner, that you can get their voice services and the license guy need all on one contract.

I think it it it becomes easy for the customer to separate some of their, normal Office three sixty five licensing with their voice only. So check-in with us. We we can help you out.

This is great for traditional UCaaS suppliers. Right? RingCentral, eight by eight, Vonage, Go to, etcetera, Nextiva. Everybody is doing a jig in the street. They’re doing the Cabbage Patch. What do you think?

I think it can be. I think it can be. It depends, but I think it definitely can be.

I think so. Again, go back to our third slide. Is it a bullet train or is it a choo choo? I think this right sizes some of the pricing. I think the UCADs traditional UCAD vendors have been, at a pricing disadvantage, certainly a margin disadvantage when going up against an operator connect, opportunity.

But this will give them, you know, ten the IT pendulum always swings. Right? And I think this might be swinging back to the full featured UCaaS environment.

Man, if Teams with my fourteen features is about the same price as my UCaaS provider with four hundred and fourteen features. What’s better for me? Again, the trains left the station. We sell a ton we’re gonna still sell a ton of it. But now I think this this helps some of these suppliers kind of level up from a pricing perspective and a margin perspective.

Okay. Well, Megan, that concludes the Microsoft Teams portion.

Hey, Megan. We got a wicked spot guy on our team out of Salt Lake who is who is I call him doctor AI. What’s his name? I forget.

J. Lo, something like that.

J. Lo. Jason Lo. J. Lo.

He is our AI guru.

And, contractually, we have to talk about AI on virtually every call these days. So we just wanted to bring show you Copilot.

Copilot, is was just released maybe a couple months ago for for everyone, and it’s really how to use ChatGPT within your, Microsoft productivity tools.

K?

Hey, Megan. Is it free?

Depends.

Maybe. Right? Maybe.

Maybe. So, you know, you can work with your customers. There are if if you do want that integration into the traditional office tools, there is a fee for that. But if you want to just use it for web searching and general use, then that’s kinda included with some of the Microsoft licenses.

So, what I would recommend is check-in with some of those CSPs who we work with to see if they can sell the Copilot license to your customers as an a la carte.

Hey, Megan. I think we did it.

Alright.

What are the action items? What are the next steps?

Well, we ask our tech advisers to do the hard part. Right? Uncover, lead anything that smells remotely like, Microsoft, any integrations into it. And then we say, you know what?

Don’t be shy. Talk to us. Right? Mikey, b and I do this all day every day.

We love talking about it. We love to educate.

And then once we talk through it, we’ve gotta register. Remember? Let’s register early. Let’s register often. We register with the right suppliers that we’re gonna recommend so that we get comped on it. And at the very end, Mike, and you’re so good at this, what are we doing?

We’re helping.

We’re gonna close we’re gonna close We’re gonna close.

We’re gonna help our partners close.

Yep. You know, tech advisers, you know, on a serious note, you guys do something that no one at Telarus does. You knock on doors and find leads. So when you bring something to us, we’re gonna treat that with the respect that it deserves. And whether it’s five users or five thousand users, we’re gonna put the same time and effort into it. So our job is to help you be more successful.

That’s what we do.

Yep. Thank you. We made it. You know where to find us. Yeah. Thanks. And we’re we’ll try to answer some of these questions.

I saw a lot of them pop up here, so we’ll answer them as we go along. But, Doug, we’ll give it back to you.

Megan, Mike, that is a terrific presentation. You should take this routine on the road. Oh my goodness. You do take this on the road.

So it’s great to have you both here, and what a fantastic delivery of that. Let’s quickly hit on a few of these questions that you mentioned, because a few of them seem to recur a little bit. Let’s go back to registration for a second. There were a couple of questions about what is the registration process, with who, and how is it done, and can Telarus help?

Yes. Yes. And yeah. So, it looks like this. You have an opportunity. It’s like fishing.

Right? I know, Doug, you’re a huge fisherman. Right? So, the the tech advisor gets somebody on the hook on on the line and takes the poll and say, hey, Doug.

I’m a little tired. Can you can you reel this in? So that first part of reeling is us talking to the client, understanding their needs, and then we come up with two or three. Like, I think you should take this to for operator connect, let’s say.

BCM one, Call Tower, and Fusion Connect. Right? They all do operator connect, but they all do it a little bit differently and a little different price point. Then we work with partners at teleris dot com.

Right? They’re our good friends. And then we say, please register the Smith company with Call Tower BCM one infusion. It’s a thousand users.

They want operator connect. Here’s all the information. Once that’s done, the supplier will reach out to you and say, oh my god. Thank you for this amazing lead.

If they don’t say thank you for this amazing lead, send them over to me. I’ll kick them in the hiney because we train my I train my suppliers on the east and the central to always say, thank you for this amazing lead.

And then we worked arm and arm arm and arm without the Boston accent together, and, we help you close it. So, Megan and I are very involved from discovery call to demo. And then once it gets in the contract phase, we kinda step back a little bit unless you need us.

A lot of times, we’ll see pricing from the supplier, and I’ll tell the the tech advisor, hey. You know, that’s list price. They can probably do a little better.

So we try to advocate for the customer. Not looking at, like, taking money out of anyone’s pocket, but we know where pricing needs to be to win deals.

Did that help, Doug?

It certainly did. There were also a few questions around those audiences, those customers who are not impacted. We, of course, mentioned that this is for new and renewal customers. But you also mentioned four categories of customers, which two which this wouldn’t apply.

And there were several questions, especially around those government customers. Are we talking strictly federal? Is it state and local? Are there any other industries that might have customers that wouldn’t be affected as well?

Yeah. I would say, I’m not positive whether it’s state and federal or combined. We find it to be those customers who need to buy the g licensing, with Microsoft, g one, g three, g five. Those are the ones that will not be impacted. So I think we’ll have to take it a case by case. If you’ve got new customers who are in the government sector, whatever that may be, let us look into it and see how impactful that’s gonna be and what licenses they have options, to buy.

Yep. And there were several questions too around international customers, and the interesting part about this is that this really began on an international basis.

Yeah. It started in the EU. You know, they, they they stirred the pot a bit out out there, and they kind of forced Microsoft’s hand. So they’ve been dealing with this for the last six to nine months.

You know, I can’t make Doug, I can’t make some of this stuff up. Microsoft released this press release on April first. How many people in the US said, oh, Microsoft, that’s a good one. You got me.

Right? And they’re like, no. We’re sort of serious about this. So, it was it was interesting timing, I guess.

But yeah. So this impacts new customers. It does not impact nonprofit licensing. Hey, Tim. How are you doing?

So the nonprofit licensing is that a series. Now, a quick bit, on that is not every nonprofit qualifies for nonprofit licensing, which is a little strange, but there’s some specific rules out there.

Yeah. Doug, anything else? And then the regular south seat count, that’s that’s a Microsoft thing. I mean, I I think you’d probably buy one seat. The key is the bigger key is the business premium and standard, that’s three hundred employees or less.

The enterprise are mandatory above three hundred. Now I’ve run across customers who have fifty employees, and they bought e one, e three, five licensing because of the feature set.

So This entire discussion again drives home to me the importance of the, technology advisor and what our Telarus advisors can offer, working in conjunction with all of you to provide resources and advice to their clients.

I loved Melissa’s comment out there. Like, Mikey says, friends don’t let friends buy direct from Microsoft. That’s right. There’s a lot of consultation to be done here.

Perfect.

Well, reach out to us. I know there’s lots of questions.

I’m Mike b at teleris dot com, m thai at teleris dot com.

Send in send in your questions, and we’ll respond to them today.

But let’s let’s get to work and find some opportunities and close them.