A great deal of non-profit organizations are moving to Office 365 for the low monthly fee with licensing their users and reducing their on-premise footprint. One question that keeps coming up is how to expand the Office 365 solution to include Enterprise Voice with Skype for Business. This is tricky, as Microsoft does not have a plan for non-profits to use Enterprise Voice as they do with their Enterprise plans (E4). Since the non-profit E3 plan covers Skype for IM, Presence, Video, and Conferencing, Non-profits will need to purchase the Skype server license for the physical server that will live on premise, and also purchase the Skype Plus CAL for any user that they wish to enable for Enterprise voice. This allows them the continue using the low cost non-profit E3 license ($4.50/user/month), and only provide the plus license for those that need it.
If you are a non-profit and would like to discuss how to leverage Office 365 and/or Skype for Business, please reach out to info@pei.com and someone will reach out to you shortly.
Martin Feehan, PEI
