You may have seen the recent announcements in the US about the availability of the Office 365 Services Upgrade on 27th February.  I would like to take a moment to update you on what this means for our Australian partners and customers. 

In terms of availability:

• In Australia our Enterprise customers will be able to buy Office 365 on their Enterprise Agreements on the 28th February. 
• For our small and medium business customers we are working with Telstra to have the service available on the same day. 
• For existing Office 365 customers, we expect the upgrade to be available in the coming months.

The announcement also talks about the availability of Office 365 via Distribution on an Open License type.  In Australia Office 365 will not be available as an Open License type, we will continue to sell Office 365 exclusively via our Partner, Telstra for small and medium business and Enterprise customers can purchase directly from Microsoft under and Enterprise Agreement.  The two new product SKUs (M and P2 SKUs) will be available in Australia as a subscription from Telstra.  They are targeted to the small and medium business customer, therefore will not be available to enterprise customers under Enterprise Agreements.

If you have any questions regarding the announcement please reach out to your Microsoft Partner Account Manager or email partnerau@microsoft.com.