Simplification is the name of the game, and it seems Microsoft is playing it. The cloud giant is said to be cutting out the Basic edition from its Azure Active Directory plan line up.
To the delight of probably no one.
Mary Jo Foley has the lowdown on what I one of the lower end tiers of the Azure Active Directory service. Microsoft actually began pulling references and links to this edition of the service as of July 1, which is the start of the company’s new fiscal year.
You may recall that the company introduced the Azure Active Directory Basic plan in 2014, pitching it as a new edition that fell somewhere between the free and premium SKUs of the service.
Priced at $1 per user per month, it also had volume discounts available, offering access to up to 10 apps per user — fine enough for most small businesses and, well, basic use cases.
Currently, though, the Azure AD Basic is no longer available for purchase by new customers. Existing customers are still able to use it of course, and will be able to renew it in the future if they do desire. Well, as long they are not using it with an Open License.
Ultimately, all things considered, this was a super low volume SKU that the company believed actually ended up confusing people.
A glance at the Azure Active Directory pricing page shows that the Basic SKU is no longer listed as one of the available options. Instead we have Free, Office 365 Apps, Premium P1 and Premium P2 as the choices for new users.
Simplification is the name of the game, indeed.
