When to use a plan and when to pick a la carte

Now that you know a bit more about the Business and Enterprise subscription levels, let's delve deeper into helping you make a choice between them.

The Enterprise plans contain similar feature sets to the Business plans, but are able to go above and beyond their limitations.

Some key benefits and features are:

• No limit on the number of users
• Ability to mix and match license types
• Access to more applications and features
• Increased usage rights, such as shared computer activation

Let's look at some scenarios where you might choose one subscription type over the other:

Scenario	Plan choice
Professional services firm of six people: Planning to grow to 30 people within 3 years	Business Essentials
Start-up recruitment firm of 10 people: Planning to grow to 70 within 2 years	Business Essentials
Established audio engineering company of 27 users: Have been operating for 9 years No growth plans	Business Essentials
Architectural firm of 12 people: Have been operating for 6 years No growth plans Need storage space for drawings	Business Essentials SharePoint Storage
Call center company with 40 staff: 10 in the office all day, five remote workers 25 shift-based call center staff who don't have their own PCs and simply need access to e-mail and the company intranet	Enterprise: E1 (15) K1 (25)
Franchise coffee house with 40 staff: 30 staff at head office 10 franchises managers Want to perform Business Intelligence with SharePoint Server 2016 Enterprise on-premises, and let franchise managers access the reports	Enterprise: E1 (10) E3 (30)
Medical services with 120 staff: Exchange 2016 on-premises Using other intranet system 15 staff require video conferencing	Enterprise: Skype for Business Online Plan 2 (15)
Hospitality services company with 700 staff: Exchange 2003 on-premises 300 staff at head office 400 staff spread across eight offices Legacy phone system, want IM and presence, and video conferencing for management SharePoint on-premise, heavily integrated with CRM and other systems	Enterprise: Exchange Online Plan 1 (700) Skype for Business Online Plan 1 (600) Skype for Business Online Plan 2 (100)
Financial services company of 5,000 staff nationwide: Lotus Notes 25 percent of workforce is permanently mobile 10 percent of workforce is primarily limited to Line of Business Application Has Enterprise Agreement which includes Office	Enterprise: E1 (4,500) K1 (500)
Automotive manufacturer of 30,000 staff globally: GroupWise IBM WebSphere for intranet Cisco CallManager telephony with Unified Comms 30 percent of workforce is factory-based Has Enterprise Agreement which includes Office	Enterprise: Exchange Online Plan 1 (17,000) Exchange Online Plan 2 (3,000) Exchange Online Kiosk (10,000)

As you can see, there are quite a number of choices and scenarios available to organizations of all types and sizes. Making the correct choice involves identifying the requirements and which options address them.