JANUARY 2015 • Directions on UPDATE 1 Licensing

Licensing Office for Mobile Devices Organizations must be proactive about managing how Office applications are installed and used on iOS and Android devices to avoid incurring the need to license Office 365 By Wes Miller

he Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, and licensed and how it will be used: vided when it is downloaded. The rule is not Word Office applications from Microsoft Viewing for any purposes. By default, all of technically enforced or enforceable by the Tare available for Apple iOS and the freely downloadable Office mobile ap- application. (For an example of the Word Android devices. The locally installed ap- plications are in a view-only mode, which application for iPhone in view-only mode plications will be valuable for mobile busi- enables viewing of existing documents but and the sign-in experience for consumer- ness users who need to review documents does not allow existing documents to be ed- level core editing, see the illustration “Word received in e-, perform edits, deliver ited or new documents to be created. When for iPhone” on this page.) presentations, and keep notes on their de- in this view-only mode, the Office applica- Premium editing for noncommercial purposes. vices. However, if bring-your-own-device tions can be used for any purpose (either Excel, PowerPoint, and Word each reserve (BYOD) users are not properly licensed for commercial or noncommercial). a few premium editing features for users these applications, the decisions they make Core editing for noncommercial purposes. who have active per-user subscriptions to independently could put the organization Excel, PowerPoint, and Word offer most Office 365 Personal or Home and sign in to on the hook for Office 365 commercial-level editing capabilities to consumers for free, the application with a af- subscriptions. A handful of options exist provided the user signs in to the application filiated with that subscription. For example, that may help mitigate the risks. with a Microsoft account. However, in this Word revision tracking is a premium feature. This report covers licensing smart- core editing mode, users may only create, However, the Office 365 Personal and Home phones and tablets for the mobile Office ap- edit, or save documents for noncommercial licenses only permit noncommercial use, as plications. Currently, Excel, OneNote, Pow- purposes—a limit that is only imposed with the free core editing level. erPoint, and Word functionality is available through the original license agreement pro- Premium editing for commercial purposes. for installation and use on Apple DOMISiOS and WATERMARK Google Android devices. Lync and Outlook Web App mobile applications follow differ- Word for iPhone ent licensing rules and are not discussed here. Similarly, Office applications for tab- lets running Windows (or Windows RT) and running the OS follow another set of different licensing rules and are not covered in this report.

Office Applications for Mobile Devices Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, and Word are installed and run natively on Apple iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch) as well as Google Android phones. OneNote is available for Android tablets, and Excel, PowerPoint, and Word for Android tablets are expected in 2015. OneNote is also avail- able for Amazon’s Kindle Fire devices. The individual applications and their Word for iPhone offers view-only functionality for free. The left screen shot shows the features vary across platform, but Microsoft initial user experience of the Word for iPhone application, locked in view-only mode by default. is working toward offering all of the appli- The middle screen shot shows a document template opened in this mode. A user can view an cations with technical feature parity across existing document but cannot create, save, or edit documents. The right screen shot shows the the supported range of smartphones and sign-in experience for Office on iPhone. The credentials used to sign in to this dialog determine tablets. Microsoft is also expected to expand the rights and capabilities of the Office mobile applications: Office to additional and tablet • If a user signs in with a Microsoft Account, the user is able to perform rudimentary noncom- mercial editing devices over the coming year. • If a user signs in using credentials for an Office 365 Personal or Home account, the user has the rights to use the full capabilities of the applications, but solely for noncommercial purposes Licensing the Applications • If a user signs in using credentials for an Office 365 account with rights to Office 365 ProPlus Excel, PowerPoint, and Word for smart- or Office 365 Business, the user has the rights to use the full capabilities of the applications for phones and tablets offer four levels of capa- commercial or noncommercial purposes. bilities, depending on how the is

COPYRIGHT © 2015 REDMOND COMMUNICATIONS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. FOR REPRINTS AND MEMBERSHIP CALL 425.739.4669 • WWW.DIRECTIONSONMICROSOFT.COM 2 Licensing UPDATE Directions on Microsoft • JANUARY 2015

Any editing for commercial purposes re- itly licensed for noncommercial use. Previ- ful in the event of a com- quires signing in to the application with an ous versions of Office for Windows, such as pliance check of the entire organization). active Office 365 per-user subscription that the Home and Student edition, have had Some organizations may find includes either the Office 365 ProPlus or Of- similar restrictions. However, detecting vio- management tools useful to aid in this au- fice 365 Business desktop application suite lations has generally always been difficult. diting and enforcement process. (both of which are licensed for commercial The use of Office on mobile devices may Proactive licensing. Organizations should use). Examples would include Office 365 be more obvious and could become a focal plan to proactively provide Office 365 Pro- ProPlus stand-alone or an Office 365 E3 point of a software license compliance check. Plus or Office 365 Business licenses with or E4 suite for large businesses, and Office Auditors will often provide the organization rights for commercial use of Office mobile 365 Business stand-alone or the Office 365 with a detailed questionnaire to ascertain to all users who require or are likely to use Business Premium suite, intended for use how software is being used. Whether and smartphones or tablets with Office docu- by small to midsized businesses. Users with how Office is licensed for use with iOS and ments. An organization with SA on Office these subscriptions may use the full feature Android devices will likely be added to such may find it worthwhile to begin migrating li- set of the Office mobile applications for any questionnaires, if they are not there already. censes to an appropriate Office 365 offering commercial or noncommercial purposes. It’s also possible that users could sign in just for the mobile benefits and to mitigate These policies are effective as of Nov. and enable core editing with a Microsoft Ac- licensing risk, even if it does not have plans 2014. In Nov. 2014, Microsoft added the count that uses their work e-mail address, to use Microsoft-hosted Office 365 services, breakpoint offering free core editing for although it is unclear whether Microsoft such as OneDrive for Business, Exchange consumers to these three applications. would use such information from personal Online, or SharePoint Online. Prior to Nov. 2014, Excel, PowerPoint, and accounts against an organization, since sig- As noted, most organizations will likely Word allowed free viewing of documents nificant privacy questions may arise. combine both of the above strategies, and but required an appropriate Office 365 Regardless, an organization that has each organization should check with its license for any editing (as described in the not mitigated the risk could conceivably legal counsel to determine its risk and the premium editing sections above). find itself in a position where it would have best mitigation strategy to cover the organi- OneNote for mobile devices is slightly to license Office 365 ProPlus or Office 365 zation’s specific use scenarios and license different, in that the application is free to Business. agreements. download, but commercial use of any kind of mobile OneNote requires a commercial Mitigating Licensing Risks Office 365 license (as described earlier for Organizations generally have two al- the other three applications). ternatives for mitigating the risk posed by users downloading and installing Office Licensing Poses Risks to DOMISapplications inWATERMARK an unlicensed manner. Most Commercial Organizations organizations will likely use a combination The freely downloadable Office applica- of both of these options. tions will generally be installed by end users Policy. Organizations should already on iOS and Android devices that they likely have a BYOD device policy or acceptable purchased and manage, without either use policy (AUP). (Such policies are com- the knowledge or the authorization of the monly used to educate employees about organization. In many cases, the user will security, risk, and compliance procedures.) plan to use them occasionally for work. Such a policy should clearly delineate what Users rarely read the “click-through” licens- devices and software are licensed by the ing agreements and, therefore, will not be organization and are permissible for use aware of any noncommercial use provi- while performing work. sions included therein. Others may not The policy should be regularly reviewed understand what commercial use entails. with employees, and the review should edu- The way the Office mobile applications cate users about who in the organization Resources are offered and licensed presents two ways has Office 365 ProPlus or Office 365 Busi- Features and packaging of Office 365 suites that the actions of a user could easily cre- ness licenses that permit commercial use are explained in the Nov. 2014 Research ate license compliance issues for the or- of mobile Office applications. Directions Report, “Office 365 Evaluation Guide.” ganization. on Microsoft has heard of some organiza- Office 365 terms and license First, the license agreement for many tions that have advised users to purchase types are in the current Product Use Rights, mobile Office applications explicitly forbids Office 365 through in-app purchases and Online Services Terms, and Product List commercial use absent a commercial Office request reimbursement. This would not documents at www.microsoft.com/licensing/ 365 subscription. For example, a user who be adequate to license the applications for about-licensing/product-licensing.aspx. signs in to Word for iPad, using a Microsoft work purposes. Instead, users should be Office 365 plan comparisons and base pric- Account to enable the core editing function- educated that this is not an acceptable op- ing are at office.microsoft.com/en-us/busi ality to edit work documents, has violated tion because these versions do not include ness/compare-all-office-365-for-business their license agreement. The user may also commercial use rights, and therefore, they -plans-FX104051403.aspx. have put the organization at risk. are not permitted to use Volume licensing briefs for Office,including Second, while there is an in-app pur- 365 Personal or Office 365 Home for work “Licensing Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus chase option for users to purchase an Office purposes (whether at home or at work). Subscription Service in Volume Licensing” 365 subscription, such in-app purchasers Organizations should periodically con- and “Licensing Microsoft Office Software in are only offered Office 365 Personal and duct in-house audits to ensure compliance Volume Licensing,” are available via links at Home, which as previously noted are explic- with the policy and demonstrate that the www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licens policy is being enforced (which may be use- COPYRIGHT © 2015 REDMOND COMMUNICATIONS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. FOR REPRINTS AND MEMBERSHIP CALL 425.739.4669 • WWW.DIRECTIONSONMICROSOFT.COM