Users and licences
Joiners, movers and leavers, licence reclaim, shared mailboxes, groups and guest access.
Microsoft 365 licensing, migration and management
Microsoft 365 is Microsoft's subscription suite: the Office apps, Exchange Online email, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and the identity and security tools around them. Arke Technologies (Pty) Ltd, in Johannesburg, supplies Microsoft 365 licences monthly or annually, and migrates, secures and administers tenants for organisations, public bodies and schools across South Africa.
Microsoft 365 and Office 365: what the names mean
Microsoft 365 is the current name for the subscription most people still call Office 365. Microsoft moved most Office 365 plans to the new name in 2020, but invoices, tender specifications and staff still use the older labels: Office 365, Office365, MS Office 365, MS365 and even "Microsoft 360" all mean the same service. It is a subscription that follows the user, not a boxed program installed once, and it sits within our business software service.
For an organisation, Microsoft 365 is four things at once:
- The Microsoft Office programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook) as desktop, web and mobile apps.
- Office 365 email on Exchange Online, with Teams for chat, meetings and calling.
- Microsoft cloud storage in OneDrive and SharePoint.
- Identity and security: Entra ID, and on the higher plans Intune and Defender, control who signs in, from which device and to what.
Dynamics 365, sometimes filed under "Microsoft 365 Dynamics", is a separate family of finance, sales and service applications, licensed on its own; see ERP implementation and CRM implementation.
Microsoft licensing cost: what drives the price
Microsoft licensing pricing is per user per month, on a monthly or an annual term. A headline Microsoft Office cost, MS Office price or schedule of Office 365 fees tells a finance team little on its own; the useful comparison is what the Microsoft packages you choose cost to run over the contract term. Six things drive it:
- Plan mix. Desktop apps, device management and advanced security each move a user up a tier; few organisations need E5 for everyone.
- Term. Monthly subscriptions can shrink when staff leave. Annual commitments cost less per month, but once the short cancellation window after purchase has passed you can add seats and cannot remove them until the term ends.
- Price changes. Microsoft adjusts local prices from time to time; an annual term holds the price for its year.
- Add-ons. Copilot, Teams Phone, extra storage, archiving and backup are licensed on top.
- Unused seats. Licences left on leavers' accounts are common, avoidable waste.
- Administration. Inside a managed IT contract, running the tenant is part of the per-user fee. Published South African managed IT rates run from about R180 to R400 per user per month, and hourly rates for IT project work (a migration, for example) from about R550 to R750 ex VAT (matnet.co.za, September 2026).
We quote licences monthly or annually for the plan mix your assessment supports, and quote migration per project. Organisations that only need to buy Microsoft 365 will also find annual subscriptions in the Server Hub catalogue; managed IT pricing explains ongoing administration.
Last reviewed: September 2026.
Product keys, free versions and grey-market licences
Microsoft 365 for business does not work like the boxed Microsoft Office package of old. There is no Microsoft 365 product key or activation key per user: an administrator assigns a licence to the person's work account, and the apps activate when that person signs in. Retail boxed or download subscriptions carry a single key that starts the subscription.
So treat offers of a cheap Microsoft Office 365 licence key, bulk Microsoft 365 product keys or "CD keys" for Microsoft Office 365 with caution. Keys sold far below the going rate are typically volume or education keys resold outside their terms; Microsoft can deactivate them without warning, and an organisation relying on them has no valid proof of licence when an audit comes. Software licensing and licence management keeps every vendor's licences compliant and on record. Free Microsoft Office 365 offers meant for students or personal use are no substitute either: their terms do not cover an organisation's staff doing its work.
Office 365 administration under one SLA
Office 365 administration is the daily work that keeps a tenant secure and within budget. Acting as your Office 365 administrator, our team works in the Microsoft 365 admin centre (still called the Office 365 admin centre or admin portal by many administrators), the Exchange and Entra admin centres and Intune, and logs every change.
Office 365 email
Mail flow, SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and email security against phishing.
Identity and access
Multi-factor authentication, conditional access and privileged roles; see Microsoft 365 security and zero trust.
Devices
Intune enrolment, compliance policies and app deployment; see device and IT asset management.
Collaboration
Sharing and permissions in Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive; see Microsoft Teams and business telephony and SharePoint and intranets.
Backup
Microsoft keeps the service available, but it is not your backup; see backup and disaster recovery.
Copilot readiness
Oversharing clean-up and sensitivity labels before Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Signing in: Outlook, the Office 365 portal and the apps
For staff, Microsoft 365 should be one sign-in. Whether they open the Office 365 portal from a bookmarked www address, the Microsoft 365 app on a phone or PC, or Outlook on the desktop, people sign into Microsoft Outlook 365, Teams and Microsoft Word 365 with the same work account and multi-factor authentication. Microsoft 365 online (Word, Excel and PowerPoint in the browser) opens from the same page. We set sign-in rules by risk, stricter for administrators and finance staff, and record them so an auditor can see who may reach what, and from where.
Governance, compliance, procurement and continuity
- Reporting. A named service lead, an agreed escalation path, change control and a monthly service review covering licences in use, security alerts, risky sign-ins and changes made. Incidents are prioritised P1 to P4, from a critical outage to a low-impact request, with response and resolution targets matched to the business impact and agreed in your SLA.
- King IV. Principle 12 places technology and information governance with the board, and our reports give it evidence; see King IV and technology governance.
- POPIA. Mailboxes and OneDrive hold personal information. We apply multi-factor authentication, retention and sensitivity labels, data-loss prevention and audit logging, aligned with ISO/IEC 27001, and document them for your Information Officer. Microsoft runs data centre regions in South Africa; we confirm where your tenant's data is stored and record it, because POPIA section 72 governs transfers of personal information out of the country.
- PFMA and MFMA. Public bodies must account for what they license; we keep a licence register that reconciles to invoices, and audit-ready change records. See PFMA, MFMA and ICT procurement.
- Procurement. Arke Technologies is a Level 1 B-BBEE contributor (135% procurement recognition; sworn affidavit available on request). Company documents, our CSD supplier number and SARS tax compliance status are available on request. Buy by proposal and SLA, purchase order or tender response; see company facts.
- Continuity. Your tenant, domains, data and global administrator credentials stay yours. A certified team works remote-first, so one service covers one office or many sites; every remote session is approved and logged. If you change provider, we hand over admin rights, licence records and documentation.