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Hi

Background: We have a fleet of Van phones that we’d like to keep a basic inventory of and the built in Office 365 MDM platform seems to fulfill our need for this, i’m also hoping the security features could assist us with GDPR. I’m drawn to the O365 platform as I like the idea of keeping everything under one hood plus it’s nice to know we have the upgrade path to go over to Intune if we required extra functionality down the road, that being said I’ve yet to review any further capabilities it may provide.

What I would like to know is how we meet the licensing requirements as the van phones do not require a corporate email address and so are not currently licensed in O365. I was thinking we would logically group the phones together and assign O365 Business Essentials licenses based on the groups which would allow 5 devices per license however I can’t find any information online that says whether or not this would be compliant.

Addition: If we are required to license these phones 1:1 are we able to apply an enterprise mobility license on it’s own or do we still require a business license?

FYI we are a company of around 250 users that are in the process of migrating to O365.

Thanks in advance.

@Microsoft

@chris-microsoft @gregory-for-microsoft

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This shouldn’t be “legal”…one license per phone, you can’t group 5 phones for one license.

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Hi Carl, thanks for the post. I understood that it was more likely this was the case but I am struggling to find anywhere that confirms it?

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Let’s try someone that knows

Chris (Microsoft)

@chris-microsoft

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Gregory for Microsoft - do you know here? If not, I can reach out internally to ask.

@gregory-for-microsoft

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???

Unless the same single employee is driving around in 5 different vans each with its own phone, this is clearly no bueno – O365 is licensed per person, that 5 mobile device thing doesn’t get you around that. So you can’t use Joe’s entitlement to run Intune on 5 phones that are being used by Adam, Bob, Charlie, Dave, and Ernie.

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Hi John2995, I agree that perhaps I haven’t been going about this the right way. What i’m trying to do is figure out what is the most cost effective way of me implementing a way to inventory my devices using MS products? For example if I am required to apply a business license 1:1 for standard O365 MDM then I would be better off purchasing an Enterprise Mobility license and using Intune to begin with.

I’m just trying to establish what my options are before I start testing anything further.

Thanks

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Device enrollment manager should be the trick here

Report back your findings

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Hi Gregory, first of all thanks this answers my question. If I understand correctly we assign 1 license to the DEM account and then have to hold licenses that can’t be applied for every device enrolled under that account? Surely people want to manage MDM at device level at least as often as they do user level?

@gregory-for-microsoft

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Think of DEM as Shared Device Activation and Enrollment, Many different users using the same device under one license. You should not need to hold licenses for those shared devices.

now if you want to have more granular individual control then the 1:1 User license model / approach is where you should look.

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Thanks Gregory, I’m glad I asked as I still don’t think I fully understand so apologies one last question if you wouldn’t mind…

I note the following:

  • ‘Each device requires a device license. Learn more about user and device licenses.’

  • ‘Each device that you assign a device software license to may access and use the online services and related software (including System Center software) for use by any number of users.’

It seems to me that your last comment contradicts this unless I’m not understanding you correctly?

Example Scenario. I have a phone called BR1_VAN1 that is part of the equipment for van 1 and is used at branch 1 by 6 different drivers. This branch has 3 vans (phones) total which are all used by the same 6 drivers.

Am i right in thinking in the above case I would require 3 Intune/EM licenses, 1 of which would be applied to the DEM account and the other 2 set aside to be held for compliance?

Again, thanks a lot for the assistance

@gregory-for-microsoft

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For anyone that may be following this for info I had to also apply a Business Essentials license to the user account I enlisted as a DEM before I was able to enroll my devices.

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